The following, for general interest, is a proposal put forward to UKCP by a number of us for a formal policy on climate change, something we hope other psychotherapy organisations might also consider as a matter of urgency. Judith Anderson and Tree Staunton presented these ideas to UKCP management earlier this year, and received a positive initial response.

A PROPOSED CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY FOR UKCP

Climate Change is the biggest threat facing the world. The likely effects are many: changing patterns of rainfall, sea-level rises, flooding, storms and drought leading to loss of agricultural capacity, food shortages, loss of bio-diversity, mass migration from affected regions, social and political unrest as countries compete for resources and as people migrate in search of more hospitable places to live. These effects are already being seen in some (primarily 3rd world) countries. In the UK a pattern of shorter, milder winters, earlier springs and hotter summers is currently noticeable.

There is still some hope that urgent, concerted, action could keep global temperatures below the danger point of a 2C rise. This requires faster action than the UK government’s target of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 and pressure to ensure a workable outcome from the international negotiations that culminate in Copenhagen in 2009. All socially responsible organizations can take action by:

• adopting policies to reduce their own carbon emissions;

• placing pressure on government for policies to produce faster, deeper, emissions cuts;

• showing leadership in their own areas of operation/fields of influence.

We recommend that the UKCP:

. Organises a carbon audit of its own activities and prepares a reduction plan, examining in particular:

• direct emissions due to space heating, and other energy use in its offices;

• direct emissions due to travel by staff;

• embodied emissions due to procurement/office practices/supply chain;

• impact on other people/organisations’ emissions due to organisation of activities (for example meetings which involve people in travel.)

The reduction plan should include targets, monitoring and a programme of employee engagement to ensure that recommendations are implemented.

2. Develops policy in relation to the above and in particular in relation to travel to national and international conferences, local and national meetings, overseas students and recommended distances students should live from training institutions.

3. Affiliates to ‘Stop Climate Chaos’, the umbrella group of NGOs working together to place pressure on national government for appropriate climate policies and action.

4. Encourages individual registrants, students and employees to reduce their personal carbon emissions through participation in the various community organizations and reduction schemes available.

5. Supports, develops and promotes understanding of the psychological dynamics involved in responses to climate change. (For example, in understanding processes of widespread psycho-social denial/apathy and of psycho-social change; in contributing to psychotherapeutic practices that address environmental damage/loss; in supporting members who are active in bringing psychological insights to community carbon-reduction initiatives or political activity.)

6. Respond to the inevitable risks posed by climate change (which will soon bring extreme psychological challenges to all global societies, and to our species as a whole) by:

i. evaluating the risks posed to UKCP’s ability to function and take steps accordingly.

ii. initiating an urgent process of discussion throughout the organization with a view to formulating a public position.

7. Make recommendations to its member organizations that they should also undertake 1-6 above.

CONTRIBUTORS

Tree Staunton is a Tutor and Course Director for Psychotherapy at Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling. She is an Integrative Body Psychotherapist and Supervisor, editor of Body Psychotherapy (Routledge 2002) and Transformations, the journal of pcsr. She lives and works in an Eco Co-housing Community in Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Rosemary Randall trained with Cambridge Society for Psychotherapy and currently works in private practice in Cambridge. She has been involved with the environmental movement since the 1970s, is a consultant on climate change and employee engagement, founder and director of the charity Cambridge Carbon Footprint, (a community organisation with a psychological approach to climate change), and author of the paper ‘A new climate for psychotherapy?’ (Psychotherapy and Politics International Issue 3:3 September 2005).

Loraine Gelsthorpe is a UKCP registered psychoanalytical psychotherapist and Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. She was a member of the academic Reference Group for the Halliday Review of Sentencing and acts as an occasional advisor to the Home Office/Ministry of Justice on PSRs and gender-related issues in sentencing in particular. She is Chair of the British Society of Criminology’s Professional and Ethics Committee and is a member of the BSC Executive Committee. Current research is based on music in prisons and women’s resettlement needs, as well as more broadly on the links between criminal justice and social justice.

Mark Brayne is a former foreign news correspondent with the Reuters news agency and the BBC who, after postings throughout the communist world in the 1970s and ’80s, retrained as a transpersonal psychotherapist in the ’90s, now specialising in trauma training and support. Mark is developing a passionate if still amateur’s interest in climate change, and the psychology of denial, on which he wrote a cover article for the BACP’s therapy today in December 2007. He contributes to an occasional climate-change-related blog at www.psychlotherapist.com.

Judith Anderson is a Jungian Analytical Psychotherapist and Consultant Psychiatrist. She is a member of WMIP for 18 years and has been an MO rep to CPJA for a few years and is on the exec of CPJA She is Chair of Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility, a national organisation that has always had a strong ecopsychology grouping within its membership.

Tags: BCPC, PCSR, UKCP, change, climate