Adaptive hope: a process for social environmental change

Future threats and ever-present uncertainty have become part of our social ecological reality. We need hope to respond to social ecological change, and our sense of hope must adapt to the changes we experience. Hope is known to contribute to resilience, be important for creating social change, and to instill a belief that better futures are possible. However, there are multiple expressions of hope that could be consolidated for navigating complex social ecological change. We propose adaptive hope as an integrative conceptualization for navigating change and connection in complex social ecological change, through both the short and long term, which can be expressed in multiple ways. We explore the features of adaptive hope using one of the author’s recent experiences of attending the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) as an illustrative example. Finally, we explore the implications and future directions for research and practice that converse with adaptive hope.