RITA Summit

Tara C. Trapani

 
This August, the Loka Initiative at University of Wisconsin Madison will be hosting The RITA (Resilience in the Anthropocene) Summit, a 3-day online event to support individuals and communities struggling with eco-anxiety and grief. 

The summit offers a wide variety of speakers and panelists. Forum readers will be familiar with Mary Evelyn Tucker, Bobbi Patterson, and Fletcher Harper, but there are also many BIPOC speakers bringing new perspectives into the conversation. Keynotes will be delivered by Richard Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Healthy Minds; Jaqui Patterson, founder and executive director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership; and H.E Mingur Rinpoche, tulku of the Kagu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, and a teacher, spiritual leader, and best selling author. To read more about all of the speakers, go here and you can view the full schedule for the event here

From the summit announcement:
Announcing RITA: The Loka Initiative is thrilled to announce the Resilience In The Anthropocene Online Summit from August 8-10, 2023! We invite you to join us for a 3-day FREE online gathering that brings together researchers, academics, experts from communities most impacted by environmental devastation and climate change, clinical and counseling psychology practitioners, and contemplative leaders to discuss eco-anxiety and climate distress within a framework of inner, community, and planetary resilience.

Over the three days, we will focus on:

  • Dimensions of Emotional Distress: Understanding the psychological and emotional impacts of the environmental and climate crises through an intersectional and justice lens.
  • Exploration of Coping Mechanisms: Learning from contemplative practices, clinical and counseling psychology, nature based and Indigenous wisdom traditions to cope and even thrive in uncertain times.
  • A Framework of Resilience: Collaboratively designing a new framework of inner, community, and planetary resilience that sustains us all.
This one is for us all! Themes include how eco-anxiety and climate distress manifests; what commonalities exist between inner, community, and planetary resilience; live contemplative practices to root us; and guided zoom discussions among various affinity and working groups on co-creating a resilience framework that belongs to us all. Find Your Community! This event centers speakers from communities that are most often left out of environmental and climate dialogues. BIPOC. Global South. Youth. LGBTQ. Women. And More. Luminaries speaking at the event include non-profit and community leaders, researchers and scientists from environmental, social, neuroscience and eco-psychology fields, contemplative practitioners and experts. Please visit ritasummit.org for more detailed event information and register to join us!

 

The summit is virtual, free to attend, and open to all.
Go here to find out much more about the event and go here to register.