Exclusive: Early results from ‘applied mindfulness’ courses suggests they have helped overcome despair that little can be done

Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent

EU officials from various departments walking in a forest near Brussels last month, led by Jeroen Janss, who runs the mindfulness course. Photograph: John Thys/AFP/AFP

EU officials working on the 27-country bloc’s green deal climate policy are attending “inner green deal” courses intended to foster a deeper connection among decision-makers and negotiators tasked with tackling the crisis. The courses incorporate woodland walks near Brussels and meditation sessions, including one that invites participants to feel empathy for trees and animals to boost “environmental compassion”.

Some managers have reportedly shown impatience at being asked to meditate and want to “get on with business”. But early results from the first 80 participants suggest the course has strengthened officials’ motivation to tackle climate problems and overcome personal despair that little can be done.

Mindfulness has boomed in the west in recent years through courses, meditation apps and books. But it has drawn criticism that it has become a “religion of the self”, with one critic warning of “McMindfulness”. However, it is recognised by the NHS as an effective treatment for recurrent depression when delivered as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

Now advocates of “applied mindfulness” believe it could accelerate consensus-building between climate decision-makers. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the need for “inner transitions” and the potential of meditation to encourage lower-carbon lifestyles.

Some UK MPs are backing a policy report launched this week that argues examining the human heart and mind is the “missing dimension” in the global response to the climate crisis.

The report, overseen by the Mindfulness Initiative, which supports the UK parliament’s all-party group on mindfulness, says tackling climate breakdown has too long been framed as a problem of technology rather than compassion and empathy, and this is holding back humanity’s ability to move faster.

Supporters include the former UN climate negotiator Christiana Figueres and the UK’s only Green party MP, Caroline Lucas.

The report argues the climate emergency is rooted in “a crisis of relationship that has us treating the world we belong to as a resource to be exploited, and the other people in it primarily as competitors”.

It calls urgently for policy attention to “the neglected inner dimension of the climate crisis” and argues for “the importance of mindfulness and compassion practices in restoring the conscious connection fundamental to human and planetary health”. Applying mindfulness, it argues, can help decision-makers mentally “stay with” the often overwhelming problem humanity is facing rather than fleeing it.

Figueres, who led the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord negotiations, told the Guardian her practice of “deep listening”, which is related to mindfulness and emerges from Buddhist teaching, was “the key” to the successful agreement.

“Had I not been practising deep listening I never would have understood where 195 countries and thousands of stakeholders were coming from,” she said. “I really wanted to know deeply what they were saying. I chalk up a lot of the Paris accord to deep listening.”

Lucas said: “Mindfulness is about making the space to feel the connections that could then inspire action. Reaching into people’s deeper empathy for the world is a way of generating the extra energy, motivation and belief that change is possible.”

She is among a group of MPs who meditate regularly together at parliament and she said the practice “keeps me on track by reminding myself, amid the noise and distraction of political life, of what’s important”.

Under the EU’s training package, officials learn mindfulness practices before being presented with raw facts about the climate emergency. They then explore how they personally relate to problems that can seem overwhelming.

Jeroen Janss, who runs the course, said strong emotions often arose, including deep sadness, frustration over lack of progress, guilt and hopelessness. Participants learn how to regulate these emotions, find their personal role and, through collaborating around concrete initiatives, come out with a sense of agency.

“They feel ‘I can do something’,” said Janss. “There is less eco-anxiety.”

“There is a lot of power in even one or two people being fully present in a meeting,” said one policy officer working on EU-wide climate negotiations who has taken the course. “The inner dimension has been missing for some time and it has the potential to unlock how we collaborate.”

Source: The Guardian

Everyday, our people need money, need things that can be purchased with money.

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Papua New Guinea's prime minister James Marape is to raise climate change and the threat to his country's biodiversity at the UN.

Marape has arrived in New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly for the first time on Friday, when the prime minister said he would also speak on behalf of small island states.

Villagers have resorted to using tires and barrels for protection  from the sea Photo: RNZ Pacific / Koro Vaka'uta

He suggests that global climate fund institutions who repeatedly tell PNG to preserve its native forests should in exchange finance basic services in his country.\

Marape pointed out that although PNG has a large land mass, it has close to 600 outlying islands and was qualified to speak about climate change.

"We were the first country in the world to relocate climate change refigees, from the Carteret Islands.

"Papua New Guinea, including the 15 other smaller Island States in the Pacific, do not emit a lot of carbon into the atmosphere and yet they are paying the price," he said.

"Relocating the people of Kiribati, who are slowly losing their land to sea water to another land mass that is not a part of their own country is a plan that they are against as well.

"Their island is sinking but the people have chosen to stay. The world must do something. We should also cite the Caterets as well."

NG Prime Minister, James Marape (right) had a meeting with the UK's Alok Sharma, UNFCCC COP26 President Designate. New York, 21 September, 2021. Photo: PNG PM Media

"Since the Kyoto Agreement and now the Paris Accord, industrialised countries have never tried to push hard to implement the agendas agreed to in the agreements."

Marape is urging industrialised nations, to do more and to work together with communities affected by deforestation and climate change "to find a viable and sustainable way forward to achieve the SDG's as well as the Paris Accord, without compromising the development aspirations of developing country, especially the smaller Island States".

"Papua New Guinea has one of the last standing rainforests in the world and if you want me to conserve it, create an opportunity for my people and country to grow without affecting the conservation of the rainforest.

Landowners walking along a logging road in an illegally logged forest, Metamin area, New Hanover, PNG. Photo: Global Witness Media Hub

"Our rainforest is the oxygen factory of the world, therefore, it is a global asset. To conserve, we must all work together to find a balance that will preserve the rainforest while improving livelihood."

According to the PNG government, data taken from the Global Forest Watch Forest Monitoring programme has revealed that only 36 percent of earth's 14.6 million square kilometres of tropical rainforest remain intact.

The balance of 64 per cent is either degraded or completely gone.

Source: RNZ

The government responsibility to protect people may require relocation against peoples' will. Determining which communities are most likely to encounter displacement requires sophisticated assessment of the vulnerability of a community's ecosystem, but also its social, economic, and political structures. Human rights principles, which include rights to food, to safe and sanitary housing, and to water, must be embedded in any relocation governance framework. The right to self-determination ensures that communities make the decision of whether, when, and how relocation will occur and that cultural and spiritual heritage is protected if relocation is the best strategy.

Human rights principles also ensure that racial and economic inequities, legacies of colonization and slavery, are addressed when responding to climate-forced displacement. Scholars continue colonization when Indigenous Tribes are not represented in, or consulted for permission to do, research on their communities and lands. Decolonization is the restoration of cultural practices, spirituality, and values that were taken away or abandoned through colonization and that are important for survival, well-being, and subsistence lifestyles. Decolonization advances and empowers Indigenous Peoples and stops perpetuating their subjugation and exploitation.

Indigenous-led research can help determine whether inclusion of human rights protections averts or minimizes severe consequences associated with government-mandated relocation. For example, in a letter to the US National Science Foundation expressing concerns with its Navigating the New Arctic program, four Alaska Native organizations explained the danger and damage to their communities when outside academics define food security, resilience, and adaptation, highlighting the importance of Indigenous scholarship and voices in research.*

Self-determination and decolonization mean that communities control the narrative about how the climate crisis affects them. Colonization continues when non-Indigenous scholars write narratives about “vanishing cultures.” The Alaska Native Science Commission and Inuit Circumpolar Council provide a promising model, having protocols that ensure Indigenous communities lead research efforts, defining the questions and methodologies. Non-Indigenous scholars need to build relationships and trust with Tribes before submitting funding applications to understand how skills offered by academic researchers can benefit and complement skills and expertise of Indigenous knowledge holders.

Community-based environmental monitoring, and coproduction of knowledge, are important decolonizing tools that can facilitate empowerment and capacity building. Community-based monitoring is important to understand local ecosystem change, which is critical to implementing community-based adaptation strategies; global, regional, and national climate change assessments generally aggregate information above the level of resolution required for effective community policy.

We reflect here on our experience in the North American Arctic and Subarctic, but such issues arise in communities around the globe. Countries such as Kiribati and Maldives face inundation from sea level rise, possibly leaving residents stateless. Sea level rise and extreme weather threaten lives and livelihoods in coastal communities in Egypt, Panama, and elsewhere. Research must support and build the capacity of Indigenous Tribes and local communities so that they have tools to respond dynamically to support adaptation that protects their human rights.

↵* M. Bahnke, V. Korthuis, A. Philemonoff, M. Johnson, Letter to “Navigating the New Arctic Program, National Science Foundation,” 19 March 2020; https://kawerak.org/download/navigating-the-new-arctic-program-comment-letter/.

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 Papua New Guinea's prime minister has called on developed nations to show more care towards island states impacted by climate change.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape and the United Nations' Resident Co-ordinator Gianluca Rampolla cut cake at a Partnership Dialogue in Port Moresby to mark 75 years of existence of the UN, 3 November 2020.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape and the United Nations' Resident Co-ordinator Gianluca Rampolla cut cake at a Partnership Dialogue in Port Moresby to mark 75 years of existence of the UN, 3 November 2020. Photo: PNG PM Media

The prime minister called for greater international collaboration to address the impacts of climate change in the Pacific.

While he cited PNG's own low-lying atolls and coastal areas, he also singled out Micronesian and Polynesian Islands as being particularly vulnerable.

According to him, having caused the greater environmental damage, nations with advanced economies owe "a little bit more care" and restitution to Pacific island states.

He urged the UN to facilitate discussions on greater assistance to islands states impacted by climate change and for technologies that can help them reclaim land.

"I ask the United Nations to coordinate this discussions without fear or favour," he said at the Dialogue event at APEC Haus in Port Moresby.

"If the UN is to advance into the next 75 years, carry the rights of every member states, including the Smaller Island States, the right to leave on their own land and not immediately look at relocation."

Marape said the collective carbon foot prints of Smaller Island States were nothing compared to the carbon footprint of industrial nations.

"I would like to press on here, on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, that advanced nations owe a little bit more care and restitute [sic] to the low lying atolls and coastal areas of our country and the Smaller Island States of the Pacific Region."

Marape said that as well as PNG he was speaking for the 15 other smaller Pacific Island states.

“The MSG ‘climate fund’ will introduce the conservation world in the pacific to a new and innovative form of partnership with the private sector. It will create a framework for the private sector and the communities who own the resources to address development priorities, whilst doing conservation and sustainable development in long-term partnerships,” Col. Saumatua said.

This was announced by Fiji’s environment minister Colonel. Samuela Saumatua when introducing the MSG Declaration on Environment and Climate Change (MSGDECC) at the IUCN World Conservation Congress here on Jeju island South Korea.

The MSG development partnership is based on the notion of “frontloading” which focuses on addressing immediate development needs of communities and engages them in long-term partnerships over the conservation of their ecosystems and biodiversity while deriving sustained income through the sustainable development for their resources.

MSG will identify key development partners from the private sector and government to source and manage funds to ensure sustained livelihoods among community resources owners while building green economies that focus on safeguarding ecosystems and the rich biodiversity.

The MSGDECC declaration outlines MSG’s vision or road map towards sustainable development and effective management of biodiversity and ecosystems. The MSG plan includes a framework for green growth as basis of all development; a Melanesian Blue Carbon Initiative; a Melanesian Terrestrial Commitment; and the Melanesian Green Climate Fund.

The Colonel said the expected results from this innovative partnership would be development gains for the communities, environment conservation gains for the ecosystems, biodiversity, and private sector gains through the sustainable exploitation of the resources.

Details of how the fund will work and subsequent criteria are still being looked at. However, investors wishing to extract resources within Melanesia are required through this declaration to make financial commitments upfront to help adaptation measures among local communities, use sustainable means of extracting resources, conservation of biodiversity, ecosystems and rehabilitation programs.

 “This declaration demonstrates the MSG’s commitment to fighting climate change, a critical issue we will be facing in the coming years and whose effects are already being felt by our communities,” Col. Saumatua who is the chairs the MSG environment ministers caucus said.

The sub-regional group which includes Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji are biodiversity hotspots vulnerable to effects of climate change, natural disasters, impact from invasive species and habitat destruction through development or over harvest due to increased population pressure.

Col. Saumatua listed varying degrees of environment and climate change challenges as:

• Threats to species and loss of biodiversity and invasion by alien species;
• Harvesting and exploiting natural resources such as forestry, fishery, mining and agriculture without suitable environmental and conservation safeguards;
• Soil erosion and degradation of coastal marine ecosystems;
• Loss of terrestrial ecosystem and resultant loss of vital water supply, food and traditional medicine, employment and income; and
• The impact of climate change with increasing numbers of villages and settlements resettled due to rising seas and inundated habitats to safer and higher ground.

“We in Melanesia believe we can effectively tackle this challenge through strong domestic action and robust regional cooperation. We believe that both are indispensable and complimentary. This is the basis of the MSG leaders adoption of the MSG Declaration on Environment and Climate Change.

Source: http://www.dailypost.vu/content/msg-green-climate-fund-address-adaptation-issues-melanesia