Environmental institutions are realising that the human-nature relationship is a tangible target for a sustainable future, but societal change of that relationship is a challenge involving modifications to both systems and human behaviours. In our latest paper, State of science: refitting the human to nature, we argue that Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) with its focus on relationships, interfaces and systems is well placed to contribute. Although it has an HFE focus I think it provides perspectives that are of wider interest. For example, how a range of disciplines can contribute to a sustainable future and the need to ‘de-centre people’. The paper is available open access. This blog provides a brief summary of one key area in the paper, the need to move beyond technological solutions and take a systems perspective.
There is growing global recognition that the biodiversity and climate crises are a product of the failing human-nature relationship and that, for a sustainable future, a new relationship with nature is needed. However, in general, humans do not live in harmony with nature, we don’t know what a sustainable future looks like. There is an urgent need for new solutions.
Humans are a ‘technological ape’; a species long dependent on and ever more defined by its technology. This helps explain the focus on technological solutions to treat the symptoms of the failing relationship to deliver sustainability and the difficulty of even starting to consider the worldviews and mindsets that define the human-nature relationship. The fixation on visible issues is captured by a simple representation of systems thinking, the ‘Iceberg Model’. The visible events of biodiversity loss and climate warming are symptoms of unseen factors below the surface at the base of the iceberg such as our mindsets and worldviews that encompass our values, beliefs and assumptions.
The foundation of Western thought is taught and continually reinforced through dominant metaphors, which we reinforce further through using technological solutions in our attempts to deliver sustainability and rebalance the complex systems of nature. This consists of two reinforcing patterns. First, when we distance ourselves from nature through technology and our built environment, we reduce how we value nature. Second, as technological apes we have come to rely on introducing more technologies as the ‘solution’ to the problems we have created. Our solutions are constrained by our worldview. In essence we exacerbate our problems rather than releasing ourselves from an unsustainable cycle.
Proposals to tackle base of the iceberg and achieve a paradigm shift in the human-nature relationship are being made. For example, through taking a systems perspective and combining the ‘pathways to nature connectedness’ with a leverage points perspective we showed how the pathways to nature connectedness could be applied at various leverage points within systems.
This provides a perspective where the pathways can inform cultural and urban design. Interventions to improve the human–nature relationship can target the powerful pathways of sensory, meaningful and emotional engagement with nature. Recommendations across policy areas such as education, health, housing, arts, health and transport, can target leverage points around system goals, design, feedback and parameters to foster closer human–nature relationships across society. The areas for action in the evidence report for the United Nations General Assembly’s Stockholm + 50 meeting draw upon this work as one route towards redefining and strengthening human-nature connectedness in our social norms.
This work shows that the design of infrastructure, places, spaces, organisations, transport, housing and healthcare can be used to build human-nature connections. Different areas with expertise to create visons of sustainable communities, designed to create a new relationship with nature. To achieve this HFE and other areas need to take an unlikely step, to recognise that design should not always be human-centred. That cognitive flip of de-centring humans to being part of nature, both as a person and as a professional, would facilitate a meaningful contribution to a wider new relationship with nature for a sustainable future. This alternative ‘life-centred design’ unites both human and nature’s wellbeing. It is time to move on from solely fitting the world to the human, to refitting the human to nature.
(2023) State of science: refitting the human to nature, Ergonomics, DOI: 10.1080/00140139.2023.2236340
Finding Nature 