Using contemplative practice to sustain equitable environmental engagement

Contemplative practices in environmental politics classrooms can reduce burnout and cultivate resilience among students and faculty. These practices lower both physiological and subjective stress from engaging with climate change, environmental degradation, and racial injustice, enabling exploration from a calmer state. Faculty can model burnout prevention for students, supporting sustainable careers. Such approaches are especially important for marginalized individuals facing campus aggressions and greater climate risks to their communities.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter explores how the use of contemplative practices in the environmental politics classroom - an approach known as contemplative pedagogy or contemplative environmental studies - can help address burnout and cultivate resilience. Contemplative practices can reduce both the physiological and subjective experience of stress that can accompany the challenges of climate change, environmental degradation, and racial injustice, allowing students to explore these issues from a space of calm and stability. As professional mentors, environmental politics faculty can model ways of preventing and ameliorating burnout for their students, in support of sustainable and sustaining future careers. Classroom practices oriented toward reducing burnout may be particularly important for students and faculty of marginalized identities, who experience macro and micro-aggressions on campus, while also carrying the knowledge - or learning - that their communities are at greater risk from climate change and environmental degradation.