Ecovillages as Destinations. Potential of Educational Tourism for Coping with Climate-Anxiety

Master's Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, grade: Pass, Uppsala University, course: Sustainable Destination Development, language: English, abstract: This paper argues that ecovillages are places where students can learn hands-on techniques to reduce their climate-anxiety and conclude by suggesting that HEI should initiate cooperation with local ecovillages to improve the problem of climate-anxiety among students.

Climate-anxiety is a growing mental health issue among the public and particularly among students in sustainability-related fields in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). The research field of climate-anxiety has emerged after 2007, and it also relates to other increasingly relevant mental health responses to environmental destruction, such as eco-anxiety. This study examines how HEI can better address climate-anxiety. Specifically, it investigates whether non-formal actors like ecovillages can help students to cope with climate-anxiety. In this context, climate-anxiety is party attributed to the way HEI teach about it. While education on climate change overly addresses cognitive learning, social and emotional learning are neglected.

Ecovillages are increasingly recognising their role in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and, through novel pedagogical approaches, can balance the shortcomings of HEI. Exploring the capacity of ecovillages for ESD and coping with climate-anxiety, the study includes five case studies of distinct ecovillages on three continents. The aim is on how educational tourism to ecovillages can help students to cope with climate-anxiety. This study found that lecturers do not sufficiently address climate-anxiety in HEI or Student Mental Health Services (SMHS) in Sweden.