CLIMATE CRISIS AND MARKED BODIES: INTERSECTIONALITY, VULNERABILITY, AND SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE

Abstract

The climate crisis has intensified socio-environmental inequalities and produced significant impacts on population mental health, especially among socially vulnerable groups. In this context, this study aims to analyze climate anxiety from the perspectives of environmental justice, intersectionality and coloniality, seeking to understand how social markers of difference influence exposure to environmental risks and psychological suffering related to climate change. This is a qualitative, theoretical and bibliographic research, based on authors who discuss climate crisis, socio-environmental inequalities and coloniality of power. The results indicate that climate anxiety is not only an individual response to fear of the future, but a socially situated phenomenon shaped by structural inequalities that more intensely affect racialized, impoverished and territorially vulnerable populations. It is concluded that an intersectional and decolonial analysis of climate anxiety contributes to understanding the relationship between mental health, territory and environmental injustice, highlighting the need for public policies and professional practices committed to socio-environmental justice and mental health care.