Humans and the Natural World Article 8
 

Why is it that so many people ignore the importance of the health of the natural world to human wellbeing? One reason may involve a kind of environmental amnesia, in that each generation constructs an idea of what is environmentally normal based on the natural world of their childhood. It could be said that we are a technological species. However, given the exponential growth of technology, we must not ignore our affiliation to the natural world that exists within the architecture of the human mind, body, and spirit.

It is difficult to solve environmental problems, such as the climate crisis, even when we are aware of them; it is all the more so when we are not. The problem of environmental generational amnesia has emerged as one of the central psychological problems of our lifetime. How do we recover from our amnesia? One way is to maintain the nature we do have, in whatever environment we live in, even highly urban environments, and to enhance their presence, and our interactions with such environments.

Noreena Hertz argues that human life today is profoundly atomised – missing many of the human connections that used to be commonplace. We’re not built for isolation. Loneliness can be astonishingly damaging to our health. For Hertz it triggers a lingering and cumulative stress response in the body, hampering our immune systems, increasing our risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia, etc. She also cites research that links loneliness or marginalisation from the broader community. Again, for her dehumanising technology, and unimaginative city planning lacking connections to the rest of the natural world is making many of us unhappy, even unhealthy.

Such is the extent of our perceived dominion on Earth leads to the question of whether we are still part of nature. It is a question that we must reflect on. Perhaps the best place to start is to consider what makes us human, which is not as obvious as it may seem.

You could argue that human status had hitherto seemed so obvious that it was seldom questioned. There is yet no definition of what a human actually is. Indeed, the experts consulted – anthropologists, primatologists, psychologists, lawyers, and clergymen – cannot agree. It could be said that early humans could be described as having a level of spiritual minds “at one” with nature, but for too long now we have seen ourselves as somehow separated us from the natural world and are today generally looking at it from the outside.

Again, is such a perspective both the source of our humanity and maybe the cause of many of our present troubles, we will probably never know the timing of our perceived separation from nature – did it begin with the Agricultural Age? Some 50 years ago Laurens van der Post in his book “The Lost World of the Kalahari” wrote about the Hunter-Gatherer  peoples of the Kalahari saying: “...they are children of nature, so close to it and so much part of it” This resonates with a fairer and more spiritual approach to life. Since then, evidence points to the fact that our Hunter-Gatherer ancestors had a greater understanding of the links between humans and the natural world than the majority of people today.

The concept of our connections to the Living Earth has got a lot to offer at a time of growing mental health issues. Prof Miles Richardson of the University of Derby is calling for the UN to adopt the concept of nature connectedness. “We rarely focus on the interface,” he said. “Sometimes we’re so disconnected we don’t see the interconnections of the natural world as a tangible thing at all.”

For decades, scientists have been raising calls for societal changes that will reduce our damaging impacts on nature. Though much conservation has occurred, our natural environment continues to decline under the weight of our consumption. Humanity depends directly on the output of nature; thus, this decline will affect us all, just as it does the other species with which we share this world.

The state of nature, and the state of the equitable distribution of nature's support, is in serious decline. Only immediate transformation of global business-as-usual economies and operations will sustain nature as we know it, and humanity into the future.

Across much of the world caring for wildlife remains as an optional extra, despite scientists saying biodiversity loss was as much of a threat to humanity as the climate crisis. The WWF’s 2020 Living Planet  Report  found global wildlife populations decreased by 68% between 1970 and 2016 with no sign of slowing However, there are signs that nature is becoming more formally recognised and maybe, just maybe, non-human voices are starting to be heard. Courts in countries such as New Zealand, once home to atrocious acts of violence by European colonialists, have begun to recognise the personhood and rights of rivers,, mountains, glaciers and other geological phenomena. “This is one of the things that is hopeful because if it happens in legal language. The report authors, however, pointed to the conservation efforts that led to as many as 48 species being saved from extinction in recent decades. Hidden behind those global aggregates there is important progress and that gives us signs that if you do put policies in place, they can work.

There is still hope left in the fight against the climate crisis, but it is not a hope represented by large multinational bodies and institutions. Hope for the Living Earth lies instead in environmental movements. It is not simply the actions of billionaires or technology that will save us, but instead environmental  mass movements driven by the human spirit, that may actually be magical enough to change hearts and minds across the world.

Human society is under urgent threat from loss of Earth's natural life. It is in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems, the world’s leading scientists have warned, as they announced the results of the most thorough planetary health check ever undertaken. From coral reefs disappearing beneath the oceans, or rain-forests becoming savannahs. Nature is being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10m years, 

In recent years the biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and many species are at risk of extinction – all largely as a result of human actions according to a study compiled over three years by more than 450 scientists. The knock-on impacts on humankind, including freshwater shortages and climate instability, are already “ominous” and will worsen without drastic remedial action.

The health of the ecosystems on which we and other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” said Robert Watson, the chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Ibpes). “We have lost much time. We must act now.”

The warning was unusually stark for a UN report that has to be agreed by consensus across all nations. Hundreds of scientists have compiled 15,000 academic studies and reports from indigenous communities living on the frontline of change. They build on the millennium ecosystem assessment of some time ago, but go much further by looking not just at an inventory of species, but the web of interactions between biodiversity, global warming and human wellbeing

David Obura, one of the main authors on the report and a global authority on corals, said: “We tried to document how far in trouble we are to focus people’s minds, but also to say it is not too late, that is if we put a huge amount of thought and work into transformational behavioural change. This is fundamental to humanity. We are not just talking about nice species out there; this is our life-support system.

Eduardo Brondizio: “We have been displacing our impact around the planet from frontier to frontier. But we are running out of frontiers … If we see business as usual going forward then we’ll see a swift decline in the ability of nature to provide what we need and to buffer global warming.”

Unsustainable agriculture and fishing are the primary causes of the ecological deterioration. Food production has increased dramatically since the 1970s, which has helped feed a growing global population and generated jobs and economic growth. But this has been at a high cost. The meat industry has a particularly heavy impact. Grazing areas for cattle account for about 25% of the world’s ice-free land and more than 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The study paints a picture of a suffocating human-caused sameness spreading across the planet, as a small range of cash crops and high-value livestock are replacing forests and other nature-rich ecosystems. As well as eroding the soil, which causes a loss of fertility, these monocultures are more vulnerable to disease, drought and other impacts of climate breakdown.