This is my personal account of grappling with eco-anxiety triggered by the degradation of a local habitat in my neighbourhood. As I browsed for solutions, I discovered that environmental issues can lead to many physical, mental and emotional issues.

1. Internal Conflict: The Search for Meaningful Action
2. Witnessing Habitat Destruction: The Fading Wetland Park
3. The Revelation: Naming the Feeling – Eco-Anxiety
4. A Question for the Authorities: Seeking Better Environmental Stewardship

For the last few months, I feel my heart sinking as every morning, post Diwali, India’s mega light festival, the AQI goes for a toss. This time, it was over 450 in Delhi and the surrounding National Capital Region. I should be used to this, as it is a recurring annual phenomenon, but I am not. Sometimes, it feels like the end of the world, which is even more distressing.

I miss the mild autumn days of my childhood; according to the lunar Hindu calendar, it is sharad. It is the time for harvesting and celebrating the soft days of transition from summer to winter. But now its synonymous with smog and pollution, which even the strong sun isn’t able to penetrate till late in the morning. It’s not smog alone, but polluted air, crowded places, jammed roads and lack of trees, flora, fauna, that makes me feel like moving to another end of the planet.

Internal Conflict: The Search for Meaningful Action

Everyone discusses the causes: stubble burning by the farmers in the neighbouring agricultural states of Punjab and Haryana, non-stop construction, the mania of development, innumerable cars, firecrackers as November is festival season in India (there is a ban on firecrackers but mischievous people always burst them through the five days of Diwali festivities and on weddings). But no one has a solution and this gnaws at me.

I feel my spirits sagging and an indescribable sense of grief. I mean it’s not my problem, is it? I am not contributing to this. I rarely use the car and I have cut down on material consumption, even turned totally vegetarian. Do I need to be more minimal? I feel a sense of guilt at the way we are treating Nature, taking her for granted, uncaring, selfish.

My morning walks normally help me deal with heavy emotional blocks. However, this air quality makes it impossible for me to go on my morning walks, watch the birds, flowers, touch the trees and enjoy the air. I fall sick as the pollutants hit my nose and then there’s no respite from cold, cough, breathing issues, fever.

Most of the times, I feel suffocated and restless at my inability to find relief from imprisoning walls as I am not an office-goer. I go to the balcony every few minutes to see whether the air is breathable and if I can go for a short walk to my neighbourhood biodiversity park.

However, this sense of impending doom, a dark future and palpitations along with restlessness isn’t entirely because of the air quality. These feelings have grown stronger over time.

In October, I went for my daily morning walk to discover a row of white LED lights around the dry waterbody in the small wetland park, around 2 km from my house. All of 2024, I had regularly visited the park, it was my doorway to birding, as I observed them at close quarters. The ecosystem had grown on me and I had begun to understand that Nature thrives when we don’t interfere with it. Did we really need all those skyscrapers that surrounded this park? Some buildings are left half constructed, wasting with time, adding more toxicity rather than necessity.

Between March and September 2024, I had become friends with the resident birds and the glorious mornings. I would always aim to reach the park around dawn, before the morning walkers took over the peaceful surroundings.

The three little waterbodies attracted sandpipers, black-winged stilts, wagtails, swallows, spot-billed ducks, pond herons, egrets, even pheasant-tailed jacanas, besides, white-throated kingfishers, Asian bee-eaters, Eurasian hoopoes, silver-billed munias, robins, cuckoos, shikra, doves, and more resident birds. I have seen golden oriole, rosy starlings, common rosefinch passing by. The flock of rose-ringed parakeets and egrets flying overhead was a mesmerising sight.

Witnessing Habitat Destruction: The Fading Wetland Park

Over months, I realised the water bodies needed cleaning. One day, they were dry and I presumed that the authorities had taken note and they would soon be filled with clean water. But one morning in mid-October, I got a rude shock. There were electric wires spread on the grass where I had seen red-wattled lapwings nest with their juveniles. I didn’t hear a single chirp that morning. The shrubs were silent.  

My heart sank as I realised that the empty water bodies, the newly installed rows of lights had driven away the winged treasures. Disappointed and disillusioned I came home with a heavy heart, unlike the spring in my feet on most mornings when I eagerly checked my camera to see what treasure I had captured.

The wetland park was no longer a wetland park, there were no chirps, no songs, no congregations of Silver-Billed Munias, Eurasian Hoopoes, Common Mynas, Prinias, even the pesty Rock Pigeons (Feral). It was no longer the magic land that I had spent mornings in.

It began to break my spirit, and breaking news headlines of ‘elephants dying, missing tigers, death of 600 migratory birds’ made me more disoriented, listless and hopeless. I ended up in a void.

I tried to shake myself out of this zone. Browsing for solutions, I realised that this was a reality I needed to accept. According to WWF’s 2024 Living Planet report, there is a 73% decline in the world’s wildlife population since 1970. That’s my entire lifetime! Another report showed more environment failings. India ranks 176th out of 180 countries in the Global Nature Conservation Index, with an abysmal score of 45.5 out of 100. This frustrated me, more at my inability to do anything concrete about it.

On April 2, 2024, a terrifying video of bulldozers cutting down the forest on the Hyderabad University Campus became viral on social media–Instagram, X, Linkedin. This heinous act was done in the middle of the night. The cries of peacocks and the scampering of deers, leading to their death, was a terrifying scene. The row over 400 acres of this green lung of the city has been ongoing for a few months now. But the sheer brutality with which the authorities began destroying the home of silent, peaceful fauna and diverse flora was heart wrenching. Read full story here.

The Revelation: Naming the Feeling – Eco-Anxiety

I am an active person, someone who seeks solutions and doesn’t drown in problems. These feelings were new to me, as I couldn’t find my direct connect with all these happenings and situations. It took me a while to understand that this was an anxiety attack, more specific I was undergoing eco-anxiety. Yes, this is a term associated with people who worry about the planet and its future, climate change, destruction of habitats, and the impact it will have on them. Spiritualists call them empaths.

The common symptoms listed on the web are feelings of sadness, grief, or despair, guilt or shame about one’s own environmental impact, anger and frustration. These psychological stressors result in fluctuating sleep and appetite patterns, headaches, fatigue, difficulty in concentration. It is further enhanced by behavioural changes such as avoidance of news or information about climate change, increased activism or volunteering.

Ideally, I should be talking to a therapist, but then, I have never been the one to give up on self-care. To break this cycle of anxiety, tangled web of thoughts and an impending doomsday, I started some soul cleansing. I started to reorganise my Nature photo dump and began to fill my social media with messages about the beauty of the planet.

During one of the browsing sessions, I discovered that India’s well-known environmentalist Peepal Baba celebrated ‘grey week’ in November 2024. So, I am not the only one experiencing the dismay and someone is speaking about it, albeit satirically. We have our own ways of dealing with impending doom! In his inimitable way, he has been waking people up to the perils of life without nature under the grey sky that engulfs Delhi and the National Capital Region. He has been vocal on the Telangana-Hyderabad Campus University row as well.  

As I churn my brain for more actions, I go through tumultuous emotions. I argue a lot with myself, going over the pros and cons of what a common citizen can do. I am not an expert, just someone who loves Nature and wants to experience its best side. I have seen remarkable changes in my mental health, thanks to morning walks with birds and clean air. I want the planet to be green and beautiful.

A Question for the Authorities: Seeking Better Environmental Stewardship

I question myself whether the authorities could invite NGOs/experts skilled in greens to take over the city parks, avoid unnecessary lighting and construction? I don’t know the best way forward. I only know I can write, take photographs and make videos. I tell myself that I am probably a drop in the ocean, but then if the drops dry up, how will an ocean be formed? This isn’t the end.

I’m participating in #BlogchatterA2Z

Recommended Reading

A: Chandigarh Rock Garden Concern: Why Public Art Matters
B: Bhimtal: The Emerald Beauty in Uttarakhand
C: Chambal Valley: Outlaws, Temples & Tales of the Ravines
D: Blogging: Dinosaur or Bird? Relevance & Mental Health Impact 

This post was created for the Blogaberry Creative (Monthly) Challenge with theme word End.