Amigxs del M.A.R. is a community-based nonprofit organization that has worked alongside communities for decades to address the physical and emotional impacts of the climate crisis. This experience led us to conduct research that gathers people's perceptions, emotions, and experiences in the face of this crisis, with the aim of promoting public policies that minimize negative emotional effects and foster climate justice.

Our objective was to highlight the emotional reality of the country in the face of the climate crisis by designing a tool to measure the beliefs, behaviors, and feelings of the population. This research was developed from a transformative approach based on ecofeminism, environmental racism, and the Three-Dimensional Model (cognition, affectivity, and behavior).

We applied a mixed approach: 684 people completed an online questionnaire and 52 participated in semi-structured interviews during 2024. The quantitative design was exploratory and non-experimental, while the qualitative phase followed a phenomenological methodology, focused on the interpretation of experiences and emotions.

The findings reveal collective anxiety, influenced by climate uncertainty, the possibility of losing homes, and feelings of abandonment. Many people reported that, since Hurricane Maria in 2017, they have been living with trauma and hypervigilance. They also identified that the climate crisis affects both mental and physical health, and offered proposals for community action.

With this project, Amigxs del M.A.R. reaffirms its commitment to generating relevant data alongside communities, enabling them to influence public policies that are sensitive to the pain, hope, and dignity of those who face the consequences of the climate crisis in Puerto Rico on a daily basis.