Back in 2021 we asked whether the lockdown spring brought about a lasting connection to nature? Many of us found a friend in nature during the first lockdown in Spring 2020, but by 2021 data suggested this was just a short-term relationship. There is now 5 years’ worth of data from over 100,000 respondents to Natural England’s People and Nature Survey (PANS) and this blog takes an informal look at a few of the trends across time and regions.

Let’s start with nature connection (data from over 22,000 people) and noticing nature (data from over 80,000 people). The 2020-2021 fall is even more apparent, with nature connection (orange line) falling by 10%. It did recover through 2021 and 2022, but there’s been further decline through 2023 and 2024. The quarterly variation looks quite dramatic in the zoomed in charts, but the fluctuations are around 2%. Interestingly, from 2023, noticing nature has seen a 4% rise, with the trends going their separate ways – a difference of around 5%. So not as dramatic as it looks, but certainly notable and sustained.

I mention quarterly variation above, but over the 5 years there’s actually very little difference between the seasons, so perhaps the variation in nature connection is linked to the actual weather, or other some other factor, like mood. See how happiness varies in a similar way in the chart below. There are 1200 responses at each time point for NCI and 6000 for happiness, so happiness is likely to be a little more stable.

I also looked at some broad regional differences. There’s around 7% difference between the lowest area, West Midlands, and the highest, the South West. It’s interesting to note this is quite small when compared to the differences between the UK and say Nepal. The lowest nation in one survey, Singapore is around 60% lower than Kenya. The UK is also low on a global scale, so in that context the regions are quite similar – the key point is that the whole nation is low. There’s a need to reconnect a nation, rather than create an equally disconnected nation.

The nature connection measure used since 2020, the NCI, has been joined in PANS by another measure over the last couple of years, the INS. While both measure nature connectedness, they have differences in focus. The NCI taps into emotions, while the INS is more cognitive. This shows up sometimes in the PANS data. For example, London is 8^th highest using NCI, but 2^nd using INS. While Yorkshire goes in the opposite direction, 2^nd to 7^th. But both measures place the South West top and West Midlands bottom. It’s useful to look at measures in the round. For example, consider pro-nature conservation behaviours and London is 7^th again. The NCI has a closer relationship with pro-nature behaviours than the INS. And engaging in pro-nature behaviours has a strong positive relationship with feeling that life is worthwhile.

While pulling out the data on trends some questions on people’s concerns and worries about visiting green and natural spaces caught my eye. Maintaining the post lockdown theme, I’ve written previously about the impact of over 3 million ‘pandemic pets’ so I took a look at ‘fear of dogs’ and ‘fear of crime’ for comparison. Sadly, both have risen since 2020. From around 15 to 19% for crime, that’s a rise of 27%. And from around 7 to 11% for dogs, a rise of over 50%. The trend below is interesting: in late 2023 it peaked at over 13%, suggesting that for over 7 million adults a fear of dogs (or poor dog owners) impacts their visits to green and natural spaces. Interestingly, that dropped dramatically when the XL Bully ban was introduced early 2024, although it appears to be returning to the overall upward trend.

Different people have different fears, and taken together the fear of crime and dogs means 1 in 4 adults are worried about visiting green and natural spaces for those two reasons. PANS includes 12 more areas of potential concern and worry, and overall 65% of people have worries of one form or another, from getting lost, to lack of facilities and on to fear of crime or dogs.

The trends show that while nature connection is falling, fear is increasing among a substantial proportion of people. People are less likely to find being in nature brings happiness if they fear visiting it. Green and natural spaces need to feel safer if the decline in nature connection is to be reversed. The more encouraging observation is that change can happen in response to measures taken. Fear can be reduced and nature connection can be higher when the environment facilitates it.