Adaptive hope: a process for social environmental change

Abstract

Future threats and ever-present uncertainty have become part of our social ecological reality. We need hope to respond to social ecological change, and our sense of hope must adapt to the changes we experience. Hope is known to contribute to resilience, be important for creating social change, and to instill a belief that better futures are possible. However, there are multiple expressions of hope that could be consolidated for navigating complex social ecological change. We propose adaptive hope as an integrative conceptualization for navigating change and connection in complex social ecological change, through both the short and long term, which can be expressed in multiple ways. We explore the features of adaptive hope using one of the author's recent experiences of attending the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) as an illustrative example. Finally, we explore the implications and future directions for research and practice that converse with adaptive hope.

Teachers’ Ideas and Educational Experiences Regarding Urban Environmental Sustainability in Bogotá, Colombia

“…The social construction of environmental sustainability had its turning point in the second half of the 20th century, with the rise of movements that denounced the environmental crisis, particularly the finiteness of resources, the lack of awareness regarding the increase in social inequities and culture, along with the inaction of governments in the face of an uncertain future. In the critical analysis of environmental sustainability, various ideas, beliefs, social representations, and worldviews arise, from which epistemological, axiological, and ontological perspectives are recognized, which allow the construction of models on the same environmental reality and perhaps contribute to fostering the vision of a possible future [10].…”