What is a Climate Café?
Climate Cafes are meetings for people who want to get together and talk about the nature and climate crisis, more specifically talking around how they feel about it. They were modelled from Grief Cafes – support groups for grieving people. It’s not meant to be a place of action, or of having to solve the problems and find the big answers. But a space to share any stresses or concerns, any eco-anxiety.
What is eco-anxiety?
In simple terms eco or climate anxiety is being worried about the environment or climate in a way that stops you from enjoying your daily life. Although eco-anxiety isn’t recognised as a health condition, it has similar signs with anxiety. Some of them can include lack or difficulty to go to sleep, the worry that any of the things you do lead to global warming, not being able to concentrate on work or the task in hand, feeling helpless or powerless, or even having panic attacks. You can read about it here
How has MWT been running Climate Cafes?
Stand for Nature Wales is a Welsh climate action project aimed at ages 9-24. Part of the project included running the first Wildlife and Climate Camp in 2023 which you can read about here. Climate Cafes were one of the sessions offered during the camp and proved really popular. The 13-17 year old participants said they benefited from having the space to share their feelings with people who could empathise, something they didn’t always have access to. Since the camp, Climate Cafes have been hosted online in order to keep access to the group available for all participants. You can read more about the project in Montgomeryshire here.
What happens during the café?
Usually, we meet every other week and start the session just by catching up. Climate Cafes are always facilitated (led) by someone, and this person invites people to speak and share what they’re up to/how they’re feeling. Often, we pick a topic to discuss, this can be a podcast episode to listen to or a documentary to watch – which we then talk about in our next café. It lasts for 1 hour and participants can share as much or as little as they like. It’s a safe space to share thoughts and feelings around the nature and climate crisis, as well as connecting with other people and feeling less isolated.
What do the participants think?
“I think they are totally awesome! It’s so refreshing to have a group of completely like-minded people to talk to, and discuss not just nature and climate change with, but also politics and activism.” Lily, 16