Psychology, environment and climate change: foregrounding justice (part one)

Abstract

We are living through unprecedented global heating,
environmental pollution, chemical toxicity, biodiversity
loss, extractivism, environmental militarisation, exclusion
of marginalised people in decision-making processes,
violence directed at environmental defenders and limits
to public engagement, to name a few issues (IPCC, 2022,
Menton & Le Billon, 2021, Noyes et al., 2009, Sealey-Huggins,
2018). While psychologists are paying increasing attention
to environmental degradation and climate change (Bailey,
Pool & James, 2021, Wainwright and Mitchell, 2021), the
discipline has been somewhat slow to address the political
and structural dimensions that underpin those issues.
Importantly, mainstream psychological scholarship has
neglected marginalised people who are disproportionately
affected and underrepresented in environmental and
climate scholarship and practice.