New paper published: "From Denial to Acceptance"

Do we have a climate trauma?

Climate change doesn’t only affect our ecosystems and infrastructure, it reaches deep into our collective emotional experience. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventually, acceptance.

In our newly published paper “From Denial to Acceptance – Leveraging the Five Stages of Grief to Unlock Climate Action”, we explore how the Kübler-Ross model can help us better understand societal reactions to climate change, and how to move beyond emotional paralysis toward action.

👉 Open Access Paper

The AdaptNow Project in the Alpine region has shown us that emotional acceptance is not the end – it’s the beginning. When communities, schools, or forest managers acknowledge the pain of change, they create space for new action, adaptation, creativity, and cooperation.
👉AdaptNow-Project

Climate adaptation is therefore not only a technical challenge – it’s a psychological one. The question remains: how far have we come collectively on the journey from denial to acceptance? Do we, as a society, have a climate trauma – or are we ready to heal it?

 ^{Image: own Illustration}