Finding Nature

Major environmental institutions around the world are realising that a sustainable future requires a new relationship with nature. Recognising that the human-nature relationship is a tangible target for change that drives behaviour. The latest example is ‘Exiting the Anthropocene? Exploring fundamental change in our relationship with nature’, a milestone briefing from European Environment Agency, which is informed by our nature connectedness research and the biodiversity stripes concept – pushing environment science-policy thinking beyond what has gone before. This recognition and progress is driven by research, as demonstrated by the UN commissioned Stolkholm+50 evidence review. The increase in nature connectedness research since 2001 is remarkable, with work in this area increasingly being published in the world’s leading journals. Keeping up with the research is a challenge and in the past few weeks alone several particularly interesting papers have been published. Covering whether nature connection is weakening over time, green space versus connection, nearby nature versus excursions, the link between connection and behaviour, urban nature connection and how, despite the evidence, designing for human–nature connection is yet to become mainstream.

There is a general belief that the human-nature relationship is getting weaker over time, people are becoming more disconnected from nature over the decades. As there haven’t been regular and consistent measures over the years this can be difficult to evidence. We can infer a growing disconnection from cultural changes, such as the fall in use of nature words in books and films. Or simply the rise in damage done to the natural world, such as the 69% decline in wildlife populations since 1970.  Handily, a paper published One Earth in February presents a global analysis of the changes in people’s psychological and physical connections to nature over time. This systematic review of over 70 articles and 100 case studies indicates that there has been a decline in human connection to nature over time. With this change varying by socio-economic and geographic settings. The work concludes that a better understanding of the human-nature relationship is crucial for a sustainable future. Such that researchers and policy makers should focus efforts on addressing this failing relationship.

A key aspect of work to address the human-nature relationship is that time in nature is different to nature connection. Time and visits are straightforward measures so get used in a great deal of research, but time and visits don’t necessarily indicate a close relationship. Several of my research papers and blog posts (e.g. here, here and here) cover the crucial difference between nature contact and nature connectedness. And a recent systematic review covering 832 independent studies provides an important summary on why the difference matters and the necessity to focus on psychological nature connection for a sustainable future. Some further work published in March adds to this.

A UK study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health also studies exposure to nature and connection with nature in tandem, therefore exploring how each explain wellbeing. After controlling for age and gender, the researchers found that greater nature connection significantly predicted lower depression and stress and improved well-being. Whereas the percentage of local green space did not significantly predict any mental health outcomes. There are many ways to measure green space and the quality and access to it matters. However, the work supports findings that indicate that nature connection is a significant component of the nature–health relationship – specifically that nature connection is linked with decreased depression, anxiety, stress and increased well-being.

Similarly, a US study published in People and Nature in February found more evidence on the benefit of nature connectedness for mental health and the need to move beyond access and excursions into nature towards engagement with nearby nature. The findings showed that nature connectedness was associated with less loneliness and greater mental health, but different types of nature engagement brought different results. In line with a previous work on simply noticing nearby nature, it was engagement with nearby nature that was linked with better mental health. While nature excursions such as camping and backpacking were linked to worse mental health. Similarly, media-based nature engagement wasn’t linked to positive benefits.

It is clear that engagement with nature, rather than simple provision of green space, is important to deliver the greatest benefits – especially the benefits important for a sustainable future. Those being increasing both human wellbeing and nature’s wellbeing through pro-nature behaviours. Supporting previous systematic reviews that have found a robust and causal link, a study published in March on pro-environmental behaviours across five countries found that a closer relationship to nature was linked to greater pro-environmental behaviour. However, further work published in Conservation Letters in March showed that priority actions for urban biodiversity conservation identified in the research, such as designing for human–nature connection, are yet to become mainstream in practice.

As the research supporting the importance of nature connectedness for a wellbeing and sustainable future increases, there is a need to understand nature connection, particularly in an urban context. Here, more recent work, again published in March, this time in Biological Conservation, explored the differences in nature connection across an urban population. Worryingly for a sustainable future, they found that it was students that exhibited the lowest nature connection. Importantly, amongst their findings was that less connected people stated that simply providing greater access to nature would not increase the nature engagement we’ve seen is crucial for building the close relationship that brings improved wellbeing and pro-nature behaviours.

The urban context is studied further in a paper published in Urban Forestry and Urban Greening in March. This study of urban green space use in Sweden found that nature connectedness was a key factor in green space use. With those people with weaker nature-connectedness more likely to perceive constraints such as danger from pests and therefore not wanting to visit green space. Conversely, those with greater nature connectedness perceived fewer constraints but wanted closer, higher quality and more peaceful green space.

Finally, February saw the publication of further research in PNAS that reminds us of the failing human-nature relationship. This work quantified the biomass of wild mammals in comparison to the mass of humanity and its livestock. The work helps dispel notions about the endless ubiquity of wildlife and provides a compelling argument for the urgency of nature conservation efforts – and a new relationship with nature.

The research above is a small sample of nature connectedness work published in the past month or so. It reflects an increasing interest from nature conservation journals, showing that the need to focus on a new relationship with nature for a sustainable future is being understood by more people, more widely. However, many still don’t see that relationship as a tangible target for change, perhaps unaware of the mounting evidence. There is though a discernible shift in science-policy thinking, going far beyond treating the symptoms of a failing relationship to seeing that improving the human-nature relationship as a tangible solution.

Soga, M., & Gaston, K. J. (2023). Global synthesis reveals heterogeneous changes in connection of humans to nature. One Earth, 6(2), 131-138.

Wicks, C. L., Barton, J. L., Andrews, L., Orbell, S., Sandercock, G., & Wood, C. J. (2023). The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on the Contribution of Local Green Space and Nature Connection to Mental Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(6), 5083.

Phillips, T. B., Wells, N. M., Brown, A. H., Tralins, J. R., & Bonter, D. N. (2023). Nature and well‐being: The association of nature engagement and well‐being during the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic. People and Nature.

Soanes, K., Taylor, L., Ramalho, C. E., Maller, C., Parris, K., Bush, J., … & Threlfall, C. G. (2023). Conserving urban biodiversity: Current practice, barriers, and enablers. Conservation Letters, e12946.

Iwińska, K., Bieliński, J., Calheiros, C. S. C., Koutsouris, A., Kraszewska, M., & Mikusiński, G. (2023). The primary drivers of private-sphere pro-environmental behaviour in five European countries during the Covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Cleaner Production, 393, 136330.

Selinske, M. J., Harrison, L., & Simmons, B. A. (2023). Examining connection to nature at multiple scales provides insights for urban conservation. Biological Conservation, 280, 109984.

Dawson, L., Elbakidze, M., van Ermel, L. K., Olsson, U., Ongena, Y. P., Schaffer, C., & Johansson, K. E. (2023). Why don’t we go outside?–Perceived constraints for users of urban greenspace in Sweden. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 82, 127865.

Greenspoon, L., Krieger, E., Sender, R., Rosenberg, Y., Bar-On, Y. M., Moran, U., … & Milo, R. (2023). The global biomass of wild mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(10), e2204892120.

Childhood is often seen as a time to begin building connection to nature. A lot of attention is given to getting children out into nature, fostering positive experiences and establishing a connection with nature. Rather than attempting to build a connection, should efforts be directed at not disconnecting young children from nature? What if our closest connection with nature is when we are born? Birth and being new born is perhaps the most natural moment for us all.

The initial basis of this blog is somewhat speculative, based on a very simple extrapolation, but one that makes good sense. Many readers will have seen the chart below showing nature connection across the lifespan. Several other researchers have found a similar curve and ‘teenage dip’. Such charts tend to cover the data collected and cut off the early years and maximum nature connectedness scores. Restoring them reveals a couple of things. How low nature connectedness is in the population and a gap in the early years as measurement is difficult in that age group.

Nature connection across the lifespan

There’s growing acceptance that the causal issue of the environmental crises is the human-nature relationship, a union captured by the construct of nature connectedness. The distance of the line from the maximum score of 100 highlights the extent of the problem. Raising populations towards that, even to levels around 75 associated with more meaningful pro-nature behaviours requires transformational change. Keeping young children above it provides another approach. Although an approach that would take decades to have an impact, it could be essential, and the process would also affect adults.

The extrapolation of the line to a maximum connection at birth is simplistic, can it be justified? Our broken relationship with nature is a modern phenomenon with a long history. The human bond with nature can be seen to have broken through revolutions in agriculture, industry and technology. Clearly, our hunter-gatherer ancestors, led very different lives, but physiologically a baby born then is the same as it is now. It is our technology and culture that has changed.

Birth is a natural event. A new born is unaware of technology and culture. At first a baby’s sensory experiences and emotions centre on its parents. Developing attachment, a deep and enduring emotional bond. As time passes the sensory experience widens to objects, simple technologies and our culture and worldview is drip fed as they begin to find meaning in the world around them.

Children are getting to know the world, to explore the ‘other’ things around them, through the senses with emotional responses they find meaning. Our modern worldview sees learning as acquiring knowledge about these things; the object and the person are separate. At school the object of interest is often broken down into separate parts in order to know it – a child may label the parts of a flower to understand it. Knowledge comes through information. A baby tends to get to know an object through a two-way interaction with it. Noticing how it responds to actions and the accompanying changes in itself – it is understanding through relatedness – a relationship that is the basis of love and care. An animistic approach where we are in the world with other things, developing skills of awareness and ‘absorbing differences’ rather than highlighting them.

knowing through interaction

Children naturally demonstrate this animistic thinking in other ways, considering some objects to be alive for example – especially if they move. Objects can seem to have life, soul or agency – stars twinkle because they are happy, teddy bears have feelings. However, in our rationalistic world animism is typically framed as an ‘error’ rather than something to be nurtured and listened to. Nature falls mute.

How’s the teddy feeling?

The relational worldview of animism was likely a worldview of our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors and is still seen in indigenous cultures of modern times where a relational worldview is common. Where people know an ‘other’ in order to live with it, rather than simply knowing facts and figures of about it. Wildlife, plants, rivers and the landscape are co-dwellers with a spiritual essence. In animism, beliefs and actions focus on living mutually with others, a relational worldview that contrasts with our modern outlook where these others are separate objects we study or control. When animals and plants become objects of study and resources, through the agricultural revolution for example, the human–nature relationship can start to break down. Our modern minds often grossly misunderstand animism and see it as a simple religion or failed worldview. Yet it is our own relationship with nature is failing.

So, perhaps we are born fully part of nature, but are schooled towards disconnection. Rather than childhood being the time to begin building connection, it is the time not to lose it. Not losing the innate joy of natural wonders such that wildlife and plants remain co-dwellers rather than objects we study or control. This reminds me of something Pablo Picasso said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

A blog by Dr Carly Butler

The Green Minds project is one of our favourite examples of how ambitious and creative thinking can deliver nature connection initiatives at scale. It illustrates how local governments can take a systems approach to help connect communities with nature for people and planet. We were delighted to see the launch of the Green Minds creative commissions series report and film. The creative commissions invited artists and creatives to draw on the five pathways to nature connectedness in designing art and creative activities to be co-produced with communities: senses, beauty, emotion, meaning and compassion.

The Nature Connectedness Research Group provided those interested in tendering a commission with an overview of the science of nature connection, and how the pathways can be activated through arts and creative practice. The five projects commissioned involved multiple art forms and workshops aimed at helping connect people with nature in urban contexts, including storytelling, movement, regenerative growing, digital technology, a forest school, and crafts.

Green Minds Creative Commissions

Art and creative activity are powerful tools for inspiring, promoting, and embodying connections with nature. The pathways to nature connectedness are inherent in both the creation of, and engagement with, artworks designed to bring nature and humans together (see for example, the works involved in the Oak Project – Studio Morison’s Silence: Alone in a World of Wounds, Charlotte Smithson’s Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow, and the Tune into Nature Music Prize).

Deep sensory engagement with nature often inspires the production of images, writing, movement that represent and celebrate the wonders of the more-than-human world. Arts can prompt the attention of the audience and participants and producers, inviting a turning towards the sensory richness of nature, a call to look, listen, and feel.An appreciation of nature’s beauty is promoted by this attention and engagement, whether through attention to detail or the presentation and contemplation of nature in places and spaces. Arts and creative practices go hand-in-hand with affective experience, offering a channel for recognising and nurturing nature’s effect on our emotions. An image, movement, sensation or play with words can have a powerful impact on how we feel – both in and towards nature – and arts can be used to heighten the nature-emotion experience. The meaning pathways to nature connectedness helps connect our thoughts, memories, values, and cultures with nature. Storytelling is one example of a practice for raising awareness of what nature means to us – and how our nature-based experiences, appreciation of nature’s beauty, and affective responses to the more-than-human world become a part of who we are. The production, experience, and impact of arts and creative practice can have compassion for nature at their core – embodying and encouraging a sense of care for the rest of the natural world.

The Green Minds creative commissions offer sensory, aesthetic, emotional and meaning-rich experiences for Plymouth communities, designed and delivered around an ethos of care for nature, and nurturing the human-nature relationship. The commissions offered people a sense of play, discovery, reflection, joy, care and wonder in relation to the more-than-human world. It is the kind of arts-nature-people-place intersection that we need much more of to help reconnect people with nature, and support closer relationships with nature in urban contexts.

Different ways of engaging with nature appeal to different people and our recent analysis into improving nature connectedness found sustained benefits can involve a variety of forms of engagement. Our latest research paper published in People and Nature provides evidence on an important area of nature engagement – Citizen Science. An activity that appeals to many and typically involves being prompted to notice and engage with nature regularly, a key finding from our wider work.

Regular readers will know why improving the human-nature relationship is important – it is the causal factor in the environmental crises, but can also bring important wellbeing benefits – so we’ll move onto the research. We set out to test the impact of nature-focussed activities on people’s connectedness to nature and wellbeing. This project, called “Nature Up Close and Personal: A Wellbeing Experiment” involved a one-week randomised controlled experiment and recruited 500 people who completed the pre and post-participation surveys which included a variety of outcome measures.

Count butterflies and notice joy

People were randomly assigned to one of six groups. Those in non-control groups were asked to take part in one ten-minute activity five times over eight days. The activities were: two different citizen science activities (a pollinator survey or butterfly recording), the 3 Good Things in Nature (3GTiN) nature-noticing activity, or a combination of citizen science and 3GTiN.

Once the data was in and analysis completed, we found that citizen science, 3GTiN and the combination of the two had significant positive effects on nature connectedness, happiness, sense of living a worthwhile life and satisfaction with life. Although 3GTiN brought slight larger improvements across all outcomes the differences weren’t significant. This builds on previous work on the wellbeing benefits of nature connectedness, but is more of a novel finding for citizen science.

We also explored whether the activities engaged the pathways to nature connectedness. Compared to 3GTiN, people doing citizen science scored lower at engaging with nature through their senses, and feeling calm or joyful, but higher for feeling that they made a difference. The combined activity engaged the pathways to nature connectedness at least as strongly as the highest-scoring of citizen science or 3GTiN individually. This shows the potential for intentionally designing citizen science to enhance the pathways to nature connectedness.

Interestingly, although citizen science activities were related to nature conservation and participants felt they were making a difference, it was only the 3GTiN activity that brought about a significant positive effects on pro-nature conservation behaviours. Providing some initial evidence of a causal link between improved nature connectedness and pro-nature behaviours to accompany the causal link between nature connection and more general, and broadly ‘carbon-cutting’, pro-environmental behaviours. This result links nicely to the recent research paper showing how emotions are more important than facts for changing minds – the 3GTiN activity asks people to note positive emotions about nature.

The results show that nature-based citizen science is more than just a way to gather environmental data: it can benefit wellbeing and nature connectedness of participants, and, in combination with the 3 Good Things in Nature activity, pro-nature conservation behaviours. It adds to the range of activities already shown to enhance human-nature interactions and nature connectedness. Citizen science could also be made even more beneficial by explicitly bringing  in more emotional and sensory engagement with nature into its design – just as we did in our recent ‘joy watching‘ work where rating the joy of birds in addition to counting species brought greater benefits.

Thinking at a bigger societal scale, the work can start to inform public policy through embedding a ‘one health’ approach to people’s engagement with nature – monitor it & enjoy it! This can unite human and nature’s wellbeing, enabling more biodiversity, supporting communities to both notice and monitor that everyday biodiversity and recognising that human and nature’s wellbeing is interdependent.

Pocock, M. et al (2023). Nature Up Close and Personal: A Wellbeing Experiment. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10432

Emotions matter. They help change mindsets, are at the heart of relationships and are expertly targeted to fuel consumption – yet the rational mind can dismiss emotions as inferior to facts and figures. The pathways to nature connectedness and our interventions include emotions to help form a close bond with nature. Our latest research paper in Urban Ecosystems uses a simple twist to turn a more rationale nature experience into a more emotional experience. The research compared the benefits of counting birds to rating the joy they bring. Afterall, perhaps birds are what emotions look and sound like.

Alongside trees, birds are the envoys of the natural world, bringing nature into our everyday lives – an opportunity to rekindle forgotten connections. For many, watching and feeding birds is already a source of pleasure. Wouldn’t it be great to enhance that experience further? Especially if that was as simple noting the joy they bring. Previous research has already shown that consciously being aware of the wonders of nature on a walk brings greater benefits.

The joy of birds

The ‘joy watching’ twist builds on an idea I had of focussing on the emotions birds bring. Thanks to promotion by the Self Isolating Bird Club and assistance from the Alpkit Foundation, 156 people took part in the study and they were randomly allocated to one of two groups. The first group (the ‘Count’ group) were asked to watch the birds in their garden for thirty minutes, identifying each species and counting how many individual birds of each species visited (similar to the RSPBs Big Garden Birdwatch). The other group (the ‘Joy’ group) also watched and identified birds in their garden, but instead of counting them they were asked to rate their feelings of joy on seeing each species. All participants filled out a survey before and after the activity, which measured their feelings of wellbeing, anxiety and connection to nature.

Participants in both groups had improved wellbeing, decreased anxiety, and stronger connection to nature, but the decrease in anxiety was greatest for those in the ‘joy’ group whose anxiety levels dropped by over 20%. This suggests that paying attention to feelings of joy can enhance the psychological benefits gained from watching birds. These results show the positive impact of watching birds and suggest that activating a sense of joy heightens the benefits further. Promoting feelings of calm that reduce state anxiety – we know that nature helps manage our emotions. The findings also support our previous research that has found improved wellbeing from noticing nature and cultivating positive emotions.

Given the involvement of members of the Self-Isolating Bird Club, our sample was not representative of the general population, and we found they had levels of nature connectedness 28% higher than more typical populations. So, to detect and improvement suggests there’s even greater potential as we’ve found in other interventions that impacts are greater amongst those with lower levels of nature connectedness. As such, we could expect much greater increases if people who weren’t already connected to their local birds took part in the activity. And, that’s the majority of the population, as we know most people don’t notice the joy of birds.

Our most joyful bird?

We also took the opportunity to explore which species brought the most joy. Long-tailed Tits came out on top, followed by Robins and Goldfinches. The lowest joy ratings were given to Woodpigeons, followed by Magpies and Carrion Crows. We expected woodpigeons and corvids to get the lowest ratings as they are disliked by many and there’s more on these cultural aspects in the full paper. There was a significant correlation between size and joy, with smaller birds bringing 50% more joy than the larger birds. There was a weaker, but still significant correlation between colourfulness and joy. Perhaps surprisingly there was no relationship between commonality and joy – although, as you’d expect, there was less data for uncommon visitors.

The Joy of Birds

Interestingly, while some birds brought more joy than others, that didn’t appear to impact on the benefits – it seems it is the act of noticing emotional responses itself which leads to the improvements in anxiety.

To sum up, the research offers evidence for the psychological benefits of watching birds, and suggests that taking part in citizen science projects like the Big Garden Birdwatch can bring about enhanced wellbeing and connection to nature. However, greater improvements in anxiety are gained by paying attention to the positive emotions experienced while watching birds.

In the context of Green Social Prescribing and Nature Prescriptions, ‘Joy Watching’ is a simple activity that anyone can do at home, or any outside space where birds are present. It could be adopted by school and community groups, or used alongside ‘bird therapy’ stations in workplaces. However, as recent research has suggested bird feeding could have a negative impact on some bird species, care would be needed in designing such schemes. However, as bird feeding increases the nature connection that brings pro-nature behaviours, there’s a need to consider the wider picture.

Our research has shown consistently that noticing nature is a critical first step towards connecting to nature for improved wellbeing. Noticing our emotional responses to nature takes us further towards building a new relationship with it. We know that those who feel close to nature are more likely to take action to help it, so appreciating the joy of birds could lead to more planting for birds and insects, better feeder hygiene, and more eco-aware behaviour.  So, next time you fill up your feeders, pause, watch, and – most importantly – enjoy the birds who come to feed.

White, M., Hamlin, I., Butler, C.W.  & Richardson, M. (2023). The Joy of Birds: The effect of rating for joy or counting garden bird species on wellbeing, anxiety, and nature connection. Urban Ecosystems. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-023-01334-y

Based on an earlier blog with Dr Carly Butler