Eco-anxiety and its divergent power holds: a youth climate activist’s perspective

I am a climate activist living and working in Nigeria. I have always had an interest in environmental protection, I remember feeling very hurt as a child when a Mango tree was unnecessarily cut down in our compound. Years later, I have become a youth organizer working with hundreds of young Nigerians on community-led, climate action through advocacy and activism. Eco-anxiety can be broadly referred to a range of emotions a person can feel because of direct or indirect impacts of ecological breakdown, climate change, and biodiversity loss. As a Black, youth climate activist, my experience of eco-anxiety has mostly been filled with anger, frustration, and powerlessness. In this commentary, I briefly explore the role of power (and the lack of it thereof) in understanding eco-anxiety, drawing from a subjective experience and research conducted in 2020 with some youth climate activists living in the United Kingdom (Uchendu, 2020). A helpful framework that has supported my understanding of how power relates to eco-anxiety is Bronfenbrenner’s social-ecological theory, the framework helps to situate the complex system of relationships between young people and their surrounding contextual environment. These relationships could either span from the young person’s immediate family and peer networks to or even broader cultural and societal backdrops (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Kilanowski, 2017). Starting with the personal space of self-identity and other external relationships, I have shared my thoughts on some emerging power links worth considering. The terms eco-anxiety and climate anxiety are used interchangeably in this article.