About

What is the Loka Initiative? The Loka Initiative is an interdisciplinary platform at the University of Wisconsin - Madison that builds capacity and partnerships with faith leaders and culture keepers of Indigenous traditions on environmental and climate issues. It was created by Dekila Chungyalpa, Dr. Richard Davidson, Dr. John Dunne, Dr. Jonathan Patz, and Dean Paul Robbins and launched in 2019. Loka’s founding UW institutional partners include 4W - Women and Wellbeing Initiative, Center for Healthy Minds, Center for Religion & Global Citizenry, Division of Continuing Studies, Global Health Institute, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Office of Sustainability, and Religious Studies. Loka is grateful to reside on Ho-Chunk lands and proud to work with Native tribes of Wisconsin through our Sacred Wisdom Sacred Earth project. You can learn more about us here.

Resilience In The Anthropocene (RITA) is a three-day online event created by the Loka Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with several collaborators (listed below) as well as many of the speakers and moderators of this event. The event is free and open to everyone to attend.

Our Vision For the Event:

Given that environmental degradation and climate change already impact the social, economic, and environmental determinants of emotional and mental well-being of historically marginalized and vulnerable populations, the vision for this summit is one of intersectionality and justice.

Through and beyond the summit, we hope to:

• Identify, differentiate, and understand symptoms of psychological and emotional impacts caused by the awareness of environmental degradation and climate crisis.

• Share science, scholarship, and analysis on the most recent findings around eco-anxiety, climate distress, environmental grief, solastalgia, and other conditions.

• Examine these findings through the lens of intersectionality and justice

• Explore a variety of interventions including contemplative tools from faith-based traditions and more mainstream wellness activities that can help increase resilience and well-being of people at the frontlines of environmental and climate impacts.  

• Seed future integrative and equitable research on nurturing resilience to mitigate suffering and transform the response to environmental crises.