Solastalgia

I came across this word only recently. It was coined by  eco-philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the  distress caused to people by  environmental change in their familiar landscape or territory. 

In Australia for example there have been studies of the psychological impact of persistent drought on the one hand, and of open-cast mining on the other. It's not hard to think of similar scenarios: palm oil production in south-east Asia has destroyed the jungle habitat of indigenous tribes, climate change in the Arctic has rendered local populations bereft  their traditional lifestyle. Natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions produce similar psychological effects but it's the ecological damage created by direct or indirect human agency that hits the headlines week after week.

Friends who live across the fields from me are currently experiencing a sense of solastalgia when they contemplate the damage wrought on the nearby hillside illustrated here. Where bluebells, stitchwort and campion flowered among stands of gorse and brambly hedgerows, machinery has torn up the vegetation and laid bare the soil in preparation for a pig-rearing scheme. It was of course agricultural land already, albeit neglected, and one could argue that it is in the nature of farming to disrupt the landscape (never truly wild anywhere in Europe).  But it's not hard to understand how habitat destruction can traumatise humankind just as much as the endangered flora and fauna we try to protect.