There is growing acceptance that we need a new pact with nature that adjusts our impact to allow the natural world to function more efficiently. The challenge over the next few decades will be to find the solutions for humanity to live well without destroying the opportunities and benefits from the natural world.   

In our modern urban world, we have lost contact with nature; most people do not know the names of even the common native animals and plants. The cost of our separation from nature might be greater than we imagine. We now know that being close to nature is good for physical and emotional well-being and childhood development.

About 4 out of every 5 humans will live in urban centers in the next few decades. Cities can be places of immense innovation that will be required to recalibrate our lives with nature. The paradox is that urban centers also distance us from the nature that is beneficial for early development and adult health. The challenge will be to find new ways bring people and nature together.

UNDERSTANDING

Finding solutions to global impacts of more people requires advice from sharp scientific minds. Uncovering the mysteries of ecology is what intrigues me and has become the basis of advice and information on how we can live better.

INFORMING

The advice from the research needs an audience and champion. That is why informing the public and encouraging children to learn about their natural world is so important. Although less glamorous but important nonetheless is advising government, organizations and industry, and participating on boards and committees that have the capacity or jurisdiction to make change.

APPLYING

Applying the advice to real action sometimes involves changes to legislation, making designations to lands, and on-the-ground efforts. We need to protect and restore important areas if we want the benefits and opportunities from the natural world but equally important is that we quickly learn to live wiser and better.

FURTHER THOUGHTS

Go to Rob’s blog

Well Being Naturally

(Published as Mother Nature Really Does Have The Answers, Vancouver Sun Daily Special Tuesday, February 3, 2009 as part of the 12 Big Ideas to shape BC’s resilient future)

By Rob Butler

It is odd how a good idea can stare you in the face for so long and when finally noticed it seems so obvious. For years we have known that stress levels decline during visits to natural areas. A stroll in a garden, a few weeks lounging on a beach, or hiking in the mountains all have restorative benefits. Gardeners and poets have written about it, hikers expound about it. Parents often say to that letting kids outside ‘burns off steam’. Spas overlooking languid natural settings are more popular than ever. JK Rawlings says the source of inspiration for the Harry Potter series came from her early childhood spent in the English woodlands. Our well being needs nature.

Medical researchers, biologists, psychologists and education experts are beginning to converge on a suite of benefits from living close to nature. Besides reduced stress, the findings indicate your physical and emotional health and your child’s development also benefit.

In November, Richard Mitchell and Frank Popham writing in The Lancet reported that living near green areas significantly reduced the occurrence of stroke and heart disease among Scottish residents. The larger the green area, the lower the heart related deaths. The reasons are not entirely clear but the authors believe fewer heart problems are symptomatic of reduced stress and increased exercise among people living near green areas. And should you fall ill, request a room with a view of nature. Post-operative recovery is fastest among patients who can view natural areas.   

Everyone knows how children are drawn to animals. Many of us have vivid memories of our childhood spent close to nature. As a boy, I lived with my family at the end of a road overlooking a forested ravine in North Vancouver. I spent hours fishing for trout, watching birds and learning about nature. My curiosity about nature lured me to the library to learn the names and lives of the creatures in my woods, and eventually to look farther afield on the local mountains and beyond.     

Education researchers have found positive effects on childhood development from experiences with nature such as mine. Peter Kahn and Stephen Kellert wrote in their book Children in Nature that the natural world might even be a critical element of our emotional and intellectual growth. Children seem to benefit greatly from nature during early development. Some research indicates that attention deficit disorder symptoms are reduced when these children play in natural areas. The freedom of exploring nature seems to allow these children to focus more on tasks.

Given the benefits of nature during our children’s development, we are nonetheless becoming paralyzed about providing them the freedom to do so. Richard Louv in his award-winning book Last Child in the Woods thinks we are letting fear rule our decisions to a point that children are suffering from what he calls ‘nature deficit disorder’. 

We might think that nature no longer has a role in our urban lifestyle but then we had better think again. We can’t sake our evolutionary history that easily. Several years ago, zoologist Gordon Orians and Judith Heerwagen wondered why landscape paintings over the centuries often depicted savannah-like settings predominated by grasslands, scattered trees along lake shores or seashores, and distant vistas. The ‘savanna hypothesis’ as it became known, posited that parkland settings are reminiscent of our early African origins. They went on to explain that parkland settings reflected habitats with abundant food, vistas where an approaching predator could be seen and trees that offered an escape if necessary. Orians and Heerwagen interpreted the favorable response to savannas as an innate response separate from culture. In other words, the ghost of our evolutionary past haunts our brains.

We might dismiss Orians and Heerwagen’s finding as being academic except that their research has a key message. For about 1.5 million years of evolution, modern humans held a close affinity to nature. The natural world was our source of livelihood, inspiration, physical and emotional being – and it held the forces that shaped us as humans. The natural world honed our skills of survival by rewarding those best suited with continued inheritance. It should be no surprise that our ties to nature are deeply rooted in our genes even if we are not aware of the strength of these connections. And because our response to nature is hard-wired, it is not going to go away. 

These findings are especially pertinent as humans world-wide are moving into cities. The impetus is well grounded for continued expansion of greenways, parks, and conservation initiatives. But we need to go farther. Our goal should be to bring nature closer to the lives of urban dwellers. We need to fuzzy the line between urban and rural. How to achieve that goal within a limited land base will be a challenge for city planners.  

An aim of the Imagine BC series was to advise on public policy for the next three decades. Predicting future needs using current information is often fraught with errors because of unpredictable future technological advances and social responses. However, the innate response to nature is hard–wired into all of us and it will not change with the latest technology or social whim. It also sheds new light on conservation. Extinction is more than the biological demise of species and ecosystems – it is a loss to our social, psychological and health well being. If bringing us closer to nature is a good thing, as the mounting evidence suggests, then public policy should put into place principles to transform society over the next 30 years.  Here is a start:

Slowly we are realizing that we need to live closer to nature for our own good. Where that journey will take us is not clear but there are encouraging signs that more citizens, city planners and organizations are feeling comfortable with nature in the city.