A Journey Through Earth Grief to the Solidarity Economy: A Relational and Regenerative Path Forward

Abstract

Instead of trying to cope with feelings of depression and anxiety or place hope in costly and potentially dangerous techno-utopic fixes as we navigate climate havoc, this article invites us to journey through Earth Grief. Therein, we are reminded of our interconnectedness with the natural world and begin to understand our emotional responses to the destruction of nature as symptoms of a larger problem, namely a growth at all costs economy. As such, the need to seek out regenerative and sustainable economic alternatives becomes paramount, with the solidarity economy (SE) movement presented as one such example. With equity, solidarity, participatory democracy, sustainability, and pluralism as its guiding principles, the SE includes various models and practices the center interdependence, reciprocity, and care for each other and Earth, two of which—care cooperatives and regenerative agricultural practices—are explored briefly herein. The article concludes with recommendations to continue to expand our worldview by developing an alternative economic lexicon and (re)centering nondominant ways of knowing and being in the world, such that transformative and sustainable social and economic possibilities become imaginable in our inner worlds, and we begin to (re)build them in the outer world with everything we have left.