Sense of Agency, Affectivity and Social-Ecological Degradation: An Enactive and Phenomenological Approach

Abstract

In the last few years, there has been an interest in understanding the impact of environmental change and degradation on people's affective life. This issue has become particularly pressing for populations whose form of life is heavily dependent on ecosystem services and functions and whose opportunities for adaptation are limited. Based on our work with farmers from the Xochimilco urban wetland in the southwest of Mexico City, we begin to draw a theoretical approach to address and explain how environmental degradation impacts people's affective life and sense of agency. Farmers who were part of our project referred to a sense of despair and helplessness toward the loss of the ecosystem and their traditional farming-based form of life. From the perspective of phenomenology, enactivism and ecological psychology, we argue that the loss of this form of life in the area is related to the degradation of socio-ecological systems, limiting the opportunities for people to relate meaningfully to others and the environment. We posit that losing meaningful interaction with the environment generates a feeling of loss of control while leading farmers to feel frustrated, anxious and stressed. Such affective conditions have a direct impact on their sense of agency. In terms of adaptation, the negative interaction between degradation, affective states and a diminished sense of agency can create a downward spiral of vulnerability, including political vulnerability.

Despite Being Distinguished as the 2020 European Green Capital, Lisbon Has Lost Public Green Areas over the Previous Decade

“…With more and more people living in urban areas (by 2050, around 70% of the human population will be living in cities [1]), the negative impacts of urbanization are building up and potentiating each other. The negative impacts of urbanization include ecological degradation [2,3], atmospheric pollution [4], noise [5,6], social inequalities [7][8][9][10], physical and mental health problems [11,12], and an overall reduction in human wellbeing [13,14]. If we add to the negative impacts of urbanization those of climate change (e.g., heat waves, extreme droughts, torrential floods), it becomes essential and urgent to develop measures that promote urban sustainability in its three dimensions (social, economic, and environmental) [15,16].…”