Back to Nature, Back to Self: Examining Ecotherapy as a Tool of Restorative Healing to Reduce the Impact of Environmental Injustice and Eco-Trauma

Environmental degradation disproportionally harms communities of historically marginalized groups, with Black communities facing compounded vulnerabilities shaped by colonialism and racialized ecotrauma. While environmental justice scholarship has focused on prioritizing infrastructure-based solutions, it has given less attention to cultural responses rooted in spiritual, communal, and nature-based practices. As a result, Black ecological knowledge, histories of environmental advocacy, and ancestral healing traditions remain underrepresented or decontextualized within dominant frameworks. The paper argues that Black communities have long engaged with the natural world as a site of healing, resistance, and collective care. By recontextualizing Black ecological traditions, spiritual relationships to the land, and community-based practices – while centering Black ecological history, the paper reframes nature-based healing as both a public health strategy and a restorative justice intervention. Grounded in an ecowomanist lens, ecotherapy is a restorative response to environmental harm that addresses the psychological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of well-being. The paper calls on practitioners, researchers, and policymakers to broaden the scope of climate-responsive approaches to include ecotherapy and culturally rooted practices as pathways toward ecological repair, collective healing, and justice.