We hadn’t seen the topic of emotions coming at the beginning of the project. However, eco-anxiety and, more broadly, the range of emotions experienced by youth in the face of climate futures, came out so strongly through many projects and interviews that it became one of the central topics of our analysis. Aside from direct conversations with projects, WTFutures also organized an “Agora” dedicated to the topic, with Svetlana Chigozie Onye (The Eco-anxiety Africa Project, or TEAP), Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska (Feeling Futures Through the Stuff We Wear) and Arnaud Sapin, a student in social and environmental psychology whose PhD studies eco-emotions in a population of young adults.

What are eco‑emotions?

The Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht defines eco-anxiety as “the sense that the ecological foundations of existence are in a process of collapse¹”. Although eco-anxiety is the expression most commonly heard, research and experience have identified a whole range of eco-emotions: typically, anger, grief, fear, guilt, sadness, powerlessness, and on the other side, hope.

Eco-emotions are, according to Arnaud Sapin, both existential and political emotions.

• On a personal level, they are an expression of how we perceive our possibility to exist in the world as it is becoming. These emotions used to be mostly future-oriented (in the words of Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska, “eco-anxiety is essentially a concern for the future”), but they are also more and more connected to present experience: “Eco-anxiety manifests itself differently across Africa because climate events are happening quickly, and young people are also facing different issues like political instability and poverty, and they have neither the social capital nor the support they would need”, says Svetlana Chigozie Onye (TEAP).
• These emotions are also political, because they relate to the overwhelming feeling, on the part of young people, that the generations with the power to act on climate change are forsaking their responsibilities and letting the next generations deal with the effects. Thus, anxiety can be compounded by frustration and anger.

“Young people are […] recognising that they are being deprived of a liveable future and excluded from critical climate policy decision-making processes. Their claims emphasise their disproportionate suffering from the consequences of climate change and their inability to imagine better futures in the face of such a bleak present.”
JustFutures‘ research article²

How prevalent is eco-anxiety, and why does it matter?

Whatever its precise form, eco-anxiety in youth is a massive phenomenon. In 2021, a survey of 10,000 children and young people (aged 16–25 years) in ten countries reported that 84% of respondents were “worried”, and 59% very or extremely worried about climate change³. More than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning. TEAP’s survey in Nigeria found that 66% of young people were experiencing eco-anxiety, and over 40 % thought they didn’t have the resources or support to overcome it.

The consequences are wide-ranging. Eco-emotions have a strong impact on how young people see their place in the future. Many of them – in several countries, a majority (Youth Talks) – feel that they will not have access to the same opportunities as their parents. Their vision of climate change impacts their professional choices, their choices in studies, and even their vision of possible parenthood. They can have impacts on young people’s mental health, sometimes reaching pathological levels: depression, PTSD… Although they are not the only factor, eco-emotions therefore contribute to the well-documented mental health crisis in current young generations⁴.

Legitimizing eco‑emotions

This, however, also requires an acceptance on the part of others. “We have to consider the stigma that exists on mental health in many African communities, where you’re expected to just survive and go through life”, says Svetlana Chigozie Onye. The authors of Not About Us Without Us add: “Mental health professionals must actively challenge the notion that the absence of uncomfortable feelings about the current state of the world (such as worry, sadness and frustration) is necessarily a sign of ‘good mental health’ and that the presence of these feelings suggests the presence of a ‘disorder’. Indeed, the absence of strong feelings in response to upsetting global issues is more often a cause for psychotherapeutic concern than their presence.”

In the eyes of parents, peers, teachers, health professionals or employers, eco-emotions should be considered legitimate emotions, and needing help to process them should be OK.

→ In the WHAT section on Emotions, we describe how several projects were designed to help young people name their emotions, share them, accept them, and begin to cope with them.

Emotions and action

Acknowledging the prevalence and the importance of eco-emotions also matter to those advocating for climate action. Emotions and action are deeply linked.

“Rather than being signs of dysfunction, uncomfortable climate-related feelings often have enormous value; for instance, worry as a warning of potential threats, anger as a rejection of injustice, and grief as a healthy recognition of loss. Together, our climate-related feelings connect us to like-minded people around the world, they motivate our action, they remind us of our care for both other people and the natural world, and they guide us as we think about the better future we would like to create.”
Not About Us Without Us

On the one hand, a feeling of powerlessness can breed apathy. According to Arnaud Sapin, “If we look at the studies, most of the eco-emotions are rather drivers than barriers to action. Highly anxious people and angry people are the ones that are doing the most. Taking action consumes a lot of energy. All emotions, whether negative or positive, provide energy that we can use to think, to reflect, to question ourselves and in the end to go, to act and make good futures. The worst is to not feel anything!”

The “action” we are talking about here may not be labeled climate action. The first order of action is often to go about one’s life, to live according to one’s values and to be able to project oneself into some future. More can accrue from there, whereas the opposite may not be true.

Along with a growing number of researchers, JustFutures also challenges the idea that activists should focus on ‘positive’ emotions such as hope, and that ‘negative’ feelings only breed despair and apathy. “Contradicting the traditionally hedonistic view that hope is inherently positive or beneficial, hope for a better future may, in some cases, obscure the need for disruptive action, encouraging conformist approaches to change instead.” In the projects, hope emerges from action, it is not a precondition, and it does not predetermine which futures can be imagined: “Positive imaginations of the future, then, require a certain emotional depth, incorporating the despair and helplessness of present-day predicaments. (…) Leaving open possibilities for future-making is an important strategy that can better equip activists to deal with plurality, conflict, and loss. (…) If despair is acknowledged, then the ‘real’ utopia becomes open and subject to negotiation.”

“Climate conversations tend to focus on facts and behaviors and solutions, concluding with ‘this is what we need to do’. […] We skip over how people feel about this, even about the very solutions. Emotions are integral to the possibility of behavioral or other change.”
Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska, Feeling Futures Through the Stuff We Wear

It is time to recognize the existence, and indeed the value, of emotions in climate action. And for professionals working across the fields of futures, climate, and education, it is also high time to better integrate emotions in their practice, discourse, and reflection.

Letting emotions speak

“One could argue that a lot of the turmoil we experience today is because of emotional suppression. […] We’re basically told in a way that you have to suppress your emotion to be able to survive life. And youths do have this boiling pot of emotions. But I also think it’s because they have the innocence to dream of a better future and believe in it. Maybe as you get older, when you experience life, that hope to dream is lost. So I think we need emotions to be able to feel anger, to feel frustration, to want to take action.”
Svetlana Chigozie Onye, The Eco-anxiety Africa Project

Pushing this reflection further , some youngsters also reclaim the place of emotions in their personal and professional lives. According to them, emotions shouldn’t be something we hide. Expressing them should not be seen as a proof of weakness but as a demonstration of emotional intelligence. For a long time, being an adult was in many ways connected with being reasonable and rational, implying, among other things, that emotions had no place in corporate, scientific and political spheres.

A transformation may be underway with youth. Many of those who participated in the projects we surveyed seem willing to acknowledge the importance of emotions and encourage others to share their feelings. Emotions are becoming a very serious matter.

1.  Glenn Albrecht, Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, Cornell University Press, 2019.

2. Santos, T.R., Rebelo, D., Garcia, A., Fernandes-Jesus, M., Malafaia, C. and Carvalho, A. (2025), Imagined Climate Futures and Collective Action: An Analysis of Affect in Dystopias and Utopias by Young Climate Activists. J Community Appl Soc Psychol, 35: e70072.

3. Caroline Hickman et al, “Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey”, The Lancet Planetary Health 5–11, 2021.

4. UNICEF, “Perception of Youth Mental Health Report 2025”.