Introduction
The EAGT Climate and Biodiversity working group, established in 2021, aims to raise awareness, mobilise energies and develop considered responses with respect to climate change1 and biodiversity loss2 as urgent field phenomena of our time.
Gestalt practitioners are grounded in field theory, which sees the organism and environment as inseparable, interdependent whole. However, how can we nurture healthy contacts within a field, whose health is jeopardized, largely by human actions?
We believe that expanding our focus from individual and organisational growth to the well-being of the entire field becomes an ethical imperative for Gestalt practitioners.
Field theory reminds us that any change within the field transforms the whole. Starting with ourselves, this calls for mindful examination whether our mind, body and living spaces, as well as the organisations and systems we build, nurture an “I-Thou” relationship with all beings and the planet.
It also involves taking responsibility for the ripples we create, as individual practitioners or as an organisation, challenging anthropocentrism, and striving to align human behaviour with the health of global ecosystems and the other-than-human world.
Our Aims
- Raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergency as an important yet often disavowed field phenomenon and encourage consideration of our intentions, actions and impacts towards planetary well-being.
- Explore how climate and biodiversity emergency related themes show up (or not) in our therapy or organisational practice, how to work with them and develop the necessary supports to remain engaged.
- Work towards promoting awareness within training institutes
- Expanding our scope to other therapy modalities, interested individuals and the wider community.
Ongoing tasks & projects:
- Continue promoting awareness within EAGT and its members
- Continue expanding EAGT Code of Ethics, Statutes, Bylaws and strategy to include environmental responsibility.
- Encourage EAGT as an organisation as well as its individual members to consider the environmental impacts of our professional and personal decisions. This can include our everyday being and thinking, and how these impact our sustainability practices at conferences, personal travel to attend conferences, food choices, etc
- Develop EAGT climate and biodiversity webinars and conference
- Explore ethical and clinical issues that may arise from the engagement with climate and biodiversity emergency related themes in the therapy room and workplace
- Provide a safe container to explore and hold our own & our clients’ difficult feelings concerning these themes, such as climate listening- or grief circles
- Offer inter-vision (peer-support), to examine and balance the tensions between being political or involved in activism while being a Gestalt practitioner.
- Incorporate climate-aware practice into EAGT training standards
- Develop training materials and workshops, such as fundamentals of climate psychology and experiential modules
- Channel energy beyond the therapy room and drive practitioners’ engagement with the wider community.
- Develop research, journal articles and publications
Historic Projects
2024-09 – Conceived and held a workshop at the Conference of the Human Rights and Social Responsibility committee of EAGT in Berlin.
2023-09 – Conceived and held one online and two in-person workshop sessions, and also contributed to a panel discussion at the EAGT annual conference in Madrid
2021-12 – Recorded interview with founding member Beatrix Wimmer at the Relational Change online gathering 2021: ‘Hoping in Darkness: Gathering Climate voices’.
http://www.relationalchange.org/resources.html#Gathering2021
2021-11 – presentation of the EAGT Statement regarding Climate Change and Biodiversity to the board as well as at the GMM, which was approved and incorporated into the minutes:
“All organs and members of EAGT – Gestalt therapists and GPOs, Training Institutes and NOGTs – commit to raising awareness of the interconnectedness of our intentions and actions towards global environmental impacts like climate change and biodiversity, as well as general wellbeing, health and living conditions affecting humans or other species.
EAGT as an international professional organisation adopts a policy where this impact is considered in any decision-making process and transformed into practical implications to support sustainability and the impact on climate change and biodiversity.”
Get in Touch with us
We meet monthly as a working group and we have separate dates for climate cafés, research and action groups. Please email maureen.ghirelli@eagt.org or ClimateandBiodiversityworkinggroup@eagt.org if you are interested in joining. Being a ‘Gestalt practitioner’ is not a prerequisite.
1 Climate change refers to long-term alterations in temperature, precipitation, and other atmospheric conditions, primarily driven by human activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation. It leads to rising global temperatures, extreme weather events, and shifting ecosystems. If left unaddressed, climate change threatens food security, water availability, and the stability of economies, causing widespread displacement and loss of life.
2 Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth, encompassing different species, ecosystems, and genetic diversity. Healthy biodiversity ensures ecosystem resilience, providing essential services like pollination, water purification, and climate regulation. The loss of biodiversity, driven by habitat destruction, pollution, and overexploitation, can lead to ecosystem collapse, diminishing the Earth’s ability to sustain life, including human life.
