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An appreciation of the psychological impacts of global climate change entails recognizing the complexity and multiple meanings associated with climate change; situating impacts within other social, technological, and ecological transitions; and recognizing mediators and moderators of impacts. This article describes three classes of psychological impacts: direct (e.g., acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment); indirect (e.g., threats to emotional well-being based on observation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks); and psychosocial (e.g., chronic social and community effects of heat, drought, migrations, and climate-related conflicts, and postdisaster adjustment). Responses include providing psychological interventions in the wake of acute impacts and reducing the vulnerabilities contributing to their severity; promoting emotional resiliency and empowerment in the context of indirect impacts; and acting at systems and policy levels to address broad psychosocial impacts. The challenge of climate change calls for increased ecological literacy, a widened ethical responsibility, investigations into a range of psychological and social adaptations, and an allocation of resources and training to improve psychologists' competency in addressing climate change–related impacts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
One of the most important personal challenges in our society is the construction of positive and lasting self-identities (e.g. Gergen 1991; Giddens 1991; Ryan and Deci 2003; Taylor 1989). The study of self and identity is also an important subject of research in social sciences, because of its cultural, social and psychological relevance, and because it is a field in which some theoretical and conceptual controversies persist (e.g. Fiske et al. 2010; Leary and Tangney 2012; Schwartz et al. 2011). Although the environment is a key factor in the development of identities, investigation into identity’s relationship with natural environments is still fairly new. Environmental psychology has a long tradition of studying bonds between built environments and self or identity, but only in the last 15 years has research begun to consider the role of nature in the construction of self and well-being. Restoration theory has been used to explain most of the cognitive benefits of nature, but focusing only on these misses some of the important mechanisms through which it has a positive impact. This chapter develops the main theoretical and operative concepts that have been raised in the research on self and nature. At the same time, the research that connects these concepts with well-being studies and quality of life is reviewed. Finally, the role of the natural environment in self, identity studies and well-being is discussed.