Mother Pelican
A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability

Vol. 19, No. 7, July 2023 Luis T. Gutiérrez, Editor

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Disconnection from Nature: Expanding Our Understanding of Human–Nature Relations Thomas Beery et al This article was originally published by Relational Thinking, 23 February 2023, as a summary of the same article at People and Nature, 23 February 2023, Open Access, Creative Commons License The picture shows environmental education in action focused on immigrant children (Credit: Sandra Gentin). Immigrant experience of nature might diverge from majority norms creating basis for discrimination and exclusion (outsidedness). Click on the image to enlarge. Summary article What is disconnection from nature? How to understand disconnection and why is it important? There is increased focus on human nature connections in the academic literature and society. Ideas here span around the extent of how much individuals feel connected to nature, what benefits they derive from a relationship, and how this feeling seems to relate to pro-environmental perceptions and behaviors. Therefore, human-nature connections relate to a transformative change in our society regarding people’s motivations to tackle grand challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change. However, only limited focus has been on types and drivers of why and how people are not connected or are disconnected from nature. In this perspective paper, we develop our understanding of disconnection to support the work on people’s nature connections. We explore types of disconnections from nature and argue that we must expand the focus from the individual to sociocultural, political, and institutional levels. We illustrate these levels through case studies, arguing, for example, that one’s cultural background influences connections and disconnections, immigrants who need time to (re)connect to new and unknown environments. In addition, people’s connection and disconnections from agricultural animals are strongly influenced by industrial types of meat production somewhere across the Globe, explicitly aiming to disconnect consumers from meat production practices or the political and sociocultural exclusion to urban nature in South Africa, also related to safety issues as well as the explicit exclusion for certain groups to connect with nature in certain areas. Types of disconnections extend across many human contexts, from individual to social meaning-making. Therefore, social and societal processes are essential to include in future work on human-nature relations. Abstract of the complete article The human relationship with nature is a topic that has been explored throughout human history. More recently, the idea of connection to nature has merged as an important transdisciplinary field of study. Despite increased scholarly attention to connection to nature, the notion of disconnection from nature remains undertheorized and understudied. In this perspective article, we argue for a more comprehensive understanding of disconnection from nature to strengthen theories of human-nature relationships that goes beyond individual relationships and considers social and collective factors of disconnection, including institutional, socio-cultural and power dimensions. Drawing on case insights, we present the ‘wheel of disconnection’ to illustrate how disconnections from nature manifest across individual or societal meaning-making processes, thereby problematizing existing research that seeks to create dualisms between human positive and negative impacts on the environment in isolation from cultural or political contexts. We do not seek to discount research or important practical efforts to foster an individual's connection to nature by elevating disconnection. Instead, we hope that creating greater awareness and understanding of disconnection will be able to guide opportunities going forward for strengthening a connection to nature along a continuum from the individual to the social. Conclusion of the complete article The results of this perspective have been to broaden awareness of disconnection and how it manifests in different areas of individual and societal meaning-making. Connection to nature is not only salient to individuals but is equally applicable to societal meaning-making processes. The disconnection from nature wheel presented in this article provides a way of showing how disconnections to nature manifest themselves with respect to different types of individual or societal meaning making processes, thus problematizing existing research that seeks to create dualisms between the positive and negative impacts of humans on the environment in isolation of cultural or political contexts. We do not seek to discount research or significant practical efforts to foster an individual connection to nature by calling on the reader to consider the social or collective elements of disconnection. Instead, we hope that creating greater awareness and understanding of disconnection will be able to guide opportunities going forward to strengthen C2N (connection to nature) along a continuum from the individual to the collective. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Thomas Beery, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Sustainable Multifunctional Landscapes, Kristianstad University, Kristianstad, Sweden. Anton Stahl Olafsson, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark. Sandra Gentin, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark. Megan Maurer, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark. Sanna Stålhammar, Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lomma, Sweden. Christian Albert, Institute of Geography, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany. Claudia Bieling, Societal Transition and Agriculture, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany. Arjen Buijs, Wageningen Universiteit, FNP, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Nora Fagerholm, Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland. Maria Garcia-Martin, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Land Change Science Unit, Zürich, Switzerland. Tobias Plieninger, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Gottingen, Germany. Christopher M. Raymond, Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. |Back to Title| LINK TO THE CURRENT ISSUE          LINK TO THE HOME PAGE

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