Connection with nature is an oxymoron: A political ecology of “nature-deficit disorder”

ABSTRACT

It has become commonplace to argue that greater “connection with nature” is needed to mobilize support for both biodiversity conservation and environmentalism generally, and hence to call for more effective environmental education to achieve this. I employ a political ecology lens to problematize this increasingly conventional wisdom by highlighting the ways in which a sense of separation from “nature” is in fact paradoxically reinforced by the very environmental education and related practices employed to overcome it. In response, I call for greater interrogation of the concept of “nature” as well as the political-economic structures driving environmental degradation.

KEYWORDS:

• connection with nature
• nature-deficit disorder
• political ecology

Introduction

An increasingly common response to the growing anthropogenic degradation of global ecosystems is to contend that this stems in substantial part from the lack of “connection with nature” characteristic of life within modern (post)industrial society and hence to call for concerted promotion of direct nature experience to develop the environmental consciousness considered necessary to reverse this trajectory. Likely the most well-known formulation of this perspective is the so-called “nature-deficit disorder” (NDD) thesis, introduced by Richard Louv in his bestselling Last Child in the Woods (2005) and elaborated in subsequent work. Diagnosing a widespread and growing NDD among moderns increasingly insulated from nonhumans, Louv contends that this separation has contributed to all manner of social problems as well as a dramatic decrease in environmental awareness and care. Others have drawn upon this and related work to declare “separation from nature” one of the principle obstacles to effective environmental protection at present (see e.g., Kareiva, 2008; Pergams & Zaradic, 2006, 2008; Tanner, 1980; Wells & Lekies, 2006;). Peter Kareiva, former Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the world's largest environmental nongovernmental organization (NGO), contends that people are “increasingly disconnected from nature and as a result less likely to value nature,” a dynamic that he warns “may well be the world's greatest environmental threat” (Kareiva, 2008, pp. 2757–2758).

One of the main strategies commonly advocated for facilitating the needed reconnection with nature is of course environmental education, which, proponents argue, should consequently strive to provide participants with the direct exposure to “natural” spaces that will ostensibly re-inspire their sense of affinity with and hence care for the nonhuman world (e.g., Louv, 2005; Milton, 2002). However, there are a number of assumptions embedded within this perspective that make it not merely problematic but, I contend, actually quite contradictory. Indeed, I argue that the very idea of “connection with nature” (CWN) is fundamentally oxymoronic in that the way this notion is both discursively framed and materially manifest paradoxically exacerbates a sense of separation from the very entity with which it seeks reconciliation. In addition, I assert that the CWN perspective offers an essentially flawed and thus deeply problematic diagnosis of the causes of—and hence solutions for—our urgent environmental problems, reinforcing, as in much environmental advocacy within a neoliberal framework(see Hursh, Henderson, & Greenwood, 2015; Maniates, 2001), a focus on individual responsibility and action and thus displacing attention from the overarching political economy of ecological degradation that, for political ecologists, should be a main focus of attention.

Despite its widespread popularity and problematic aspects, however, neither the NDD thesis nor the sizable CWN literature that surrounds it has received much critical commentary to date (for a notable exception see Dickinson, 2013). In this article, therefore, I contribute to problematizing this increasingly conventional wisdom within environmental education and related fields by employing a political ecology lens to highlight the perspective's essentially contradictory character. My analysis proceeds along two lines. First, conceptually, I point out that at the same time as they claim that people need to overcome their disconnection with “nature,” environmentalists also commonly frame nature as a “self-willed” entity separate from human consciousness and society. Materially, at the same time, conservation practice characteristically erects a physical separation between humans and the “nature” to which they are then invited to reconnect by crossing back over this spatial divide as well. The result, I conclude, is that a sense of separation from nature is in fact commonly reinforced by the very environmental education and related practices employed to overcome it. In response, I call for greater problematization of this thing called “nature” at the heart of the discussion, probing the cultural and political economic logics that structure the ways in which the demand for greater connection with nature is framed and alternative means of conceptualizing human-nonhuman relations that a political ecology perspective affords.

This analysis is primarily conceptual, yet it draws on 15 years of empirical research concerning the delivery of environmental education in the context of commercial ecotourism as well as a thorough review of the relevant literature. I begin by briefly outlining the CWN literature that this analysis seeks to problematize. I then develop my critique of this perspective in terms of the two main points outlined previously. Subsequently, I show how a political ecology approach can shed light on both the nature of the “nature” concept at the heart of the issue and the political economy of environmental degradation largely neglected by most discussion of CWN to date.

Connection with nature

As Zylstra, Knight, Esler, and Le Grange observe in their recent review of the growing CWN literature, “‘Reconnect with nature’ has become the mantra for addressing humanity's severance from the natural world” (2014, p. 120). This has led to a proliferation of discussion in both scholarly and popular media, encompassing such diverse fields as “ecophilosophy, public health, environmental education, nature-based tourism, outdoor adventure, and multiple psychology disciplines” (Zylstra et al., 2014, p. 120). The essence of the perspective holds that, as Balmford and Cowling encapsulate it, environmentalists must “tackle perhaps the most pervasive underlying threat of all by reconnecting people and nature . . . even if all the other building blocks of effective conservation are in place, we will not succeed unless the general public cares, and they are unlikely to care enough if they no longer experience nature directly” (2006, p. 694). In their literature review, Zylstra et al. (2014, p. 123) agree that “without the direct experience of nature needed to form an ecological consciousness, we cannot expect an ecological conscience which motivates care and action.”

In addition to enhancing environmental awareness and protection, CWN is seen to produce an abundance of health benefits. Sandifer, Sutton-Grier, and Ward (2015) summarize the growing body of research on this topic:

A wide range of positive mental and emotional effects have been found to be associated with human exposure to nature as summarized here. Much less work has focused on physical health, but the evidence indicates positive impacts of nature exposure on general health, stress reduction, increased physical activity, and reduced incidence/levels of cardiovascular, intestinal, and respiratory diseases including COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], asthma, allergies, inflammatory disorders, and a host of other maladies. (2015, p. 9)

Hence, promoting greater CWN is seen to “provide a win for human health and for biodiversity conservation” (Sandifer et al., 2015, p. 12)

In the popular consciousness, this perspective has become closely associated with Louv's (2005) discussion of “nature-deficit disorder” (Dickinson, 2013). Although Louv proposed this term as merely an analogy rather than an actual syndrome akin to the “attention-deficit disorder” that inspired it (and indeed, foregrounding this term in Louv's original subtitle was a decision made by the publisher rather than Louv), it has been widely adopted by environmental educators and others in a much more literal sense (see Dickinson, 2013). Hence, the threat of an ostensible NDD to both human health and environmental protection is now commonly cited by educators, conservationists, and health practitioners alike as justification for their interventions.

On the other hand, proponents of the CWN perspective remain frustrated by the relative lack of attention to this “problem” paid by policymakers themselves. As Zylstra and colleagues lament,

despite the case for CWN being replete in the literature. . .global society has made little progress in achieving aspirations toward CWN or behaviors which sustain biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. There is also an apparent lack of appreciation in government, business, and the general populace about the significance of CWN and its relevance to societal problems. (2014, p. 120)

The underlying assumption in such assertions is of course that were policy makers more responsive to the CWN perspective, more effective action to combat environmental degradation would logically result. What follows from this assumption is that unresponsive policy makers must themselves be disconnected from nature—hence their lack of awareness of the importance of the perspective—and should therefore be targeted by the same interventions directed at their constituents. The argument thus comes full circle.

In this article I do not necessarily dispute research documenting a decrease in visitation to national parks and other explicitly “natural” spaces or the negative health impacts correlated with this decrease, Yet, I find the overarching perspective deeply problematic in various respects. First and foremost, I contend that it is inherently contradictory both in its discursive promotion of a culturally specific sense of the nature of the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe in which it is grounded and in the material practices it advocates in order to address the framing of this relationship. In the following, I explain this assertion with reference to the two themes outlined earlier.

Elements of a misdiagnosis

The nature-culture dichotomy

At the heart of the matter is of course this thing called “nature” with which CWN advocates seek to reconnect us. As Raymond Williams famously observed, the concept of “nature” is “perhaps the most complex word in the language” (1983, p. 221), an idea with a lengthy history and numerous conflicting definitions that “encapsulates a potentially infinite series of disparate fantasy objects” (Morton, 2007, p. 14). However, cutting through most of the ways in which the term is used is a common sense that the entity they designate is something not merely distinct from but in fact defined oppositionally to human consciousness (see Castree, 2013; Fletcher, 2009). This is grounded in a conceptual dichotomy between opposing realms of “nature” and “culture” characteristic of a Western worldview in the modern era that has become the subject of an extensive literature in political ecology and related fields (see Castree, 2013). Although earlier theorists such as Lévi-Strauss (1969) thought that a tendency to dichotomize nature and culture was universal to human thought, subsequent research has revealed that such a tendency to distinguish human thought and activity from everything else in the “biophysical” world is not necessarily common to all peoples everywhere, many of whom do not make such firm distinctions, or whose distinctions make quite different divisions than those between humans and nonhumans per se (Descola, 2013; Latour, 2004).

The idea that one could be disconnected from “nature,” therefore, is fundamentally grounded in a culturally specific nature-culture dichotomy, for without this sense of strict separation between the human and nonhuman realms this particular perception of alienation would not be possible. In other words, the CWN perspective tends to confuse a culturally specific worldview for the human condition in general.

The larger issue, however, is that if “nature” is defined as opposite the human sphere then the very invocation of the concept paradoxically reinforces the sense of opposition it intends to challenge. As Morton explains, “I am immersed in nature is not a mantra whose repetition brings about its content” (2007, p. 183, emphasis in original), for “[b]y setting up nature as an object ‘over there’. . . it re-establishes the very separation it seeks to abolish” (p. 125). Asserting that we must “reconnect with nature,” in other words, reinforces the impression of an entity from which we are fundamentally separate even in its advocacy of our overcoming this ostensible separation.

Yet, this common conceptualization of “nature” as fundamentally opposed to human culture competes with another sense of the term in which humans are conversely seen to be part of a “nature” writ large (Castree, 2013). The result is a deep-seated ambivalence wherein humans are thus described as simultaneously part of yet separate from this thing called “nature” they are supposed to reconnect with in terms of the CWN approach. Such ambivalence is clearly evident in Zylstra and colleagues’ recent review of the CWN literature, in which they explicitly define the “nature” they reference as encompassing “any element of the biophysical system, which includes flora, fauna, and geological landforms occurring across a range of scales and degrees of human presence. ‘Nature’ may be therefore conceived as the biophysical environment as it exists without human beings’” (2014, p. 221). However, they admit that “this distinction remains problematic since it perpetuates the conceptual and perceptual human/nature divide” (Zylstra et al., 2014, p. 221) that the CWN perspective seeks specifically to overcome. Still, they claim, “for the purposes of approaching this review, it is a necessary demarcation.” Elsewhere, however, the same authors assert that “humans are already an intimate part of nature” (p. 221–222), clearly contradicting their earlier definition. Yet they then go even further, acknowledging as argued in the political ecology literature previously cited that “‘Nature’ is largely a social-cultural construction and its conceptualization will vary across—and inevitably be influenced by—such contexts” (p. 221).

Hence, in the same discussion we find three simultaneous yet mutually exclusive definitions of the common term: (1) nature as an entity in the world excluding humans; (2) nature as an entity including humans; (3) nature as not an entity at all but rather a culturally specific conceptual construction. I do not intend to single out Zylstra et al., for equivocation of this sort is pervasive in discussions of CWN as well as among environmentalists in general. As Dickenson observes in her own critique of the NDD thesis, “Despite Louv and educators’ forefronted assertions that humans are a part of nature, the primary nature they evoke is an anthropocentric human construction, driven by and entrenched in a human-nature binary” (2013, p. 14–15).

The result is that participants in environmental education activities intended to reconnect them with nature are commonly instructed simultaneously that nature is both something separate from them and something of which they are part. Yet the very linguistic construction used to designate the entity in question includes a distinction between the “natural” and “human” realms that Zylstra et al. see as a problematic yet “necessary demarcation” for purposes of conceptual clarity. In short, use of the very term “nature” to alert people to their alienation and need for reconnection paradoxically reinforces their sense of separation from the thing with which they seek to reconnect. On the other hand, even the opposite assertion that humans are already part of nature paradoxically reinforces a conceptual separation from this same “nature,” since as Argyrou (2005) asserts, in order to occupy the vantage point from which one can perceive this unity one must necessarily stand apart from the unity itself.

Conservation

This venerable conceptual distinction between “humans” and “nature” has been matched by longstanding attempts to physically separate people from nonhumans in the ostensible interest of environmentalism. This is most commonly expressed in the realm of biodiversity conservation, the global movement in support of which has historically been grounded in the creation of so-called “protected areas” (PAs) in which a space is designated as reserved for exclusive habitation by nonhuman (“wild”) life and from which permanent human settlements are therefore excluded. PA creation in much of the world has entailed substantial work to erect a physical separation between humans and nonhumans by expressly expelling people from areas designated as PAs, in an approach termed “fortress conservation” within a growing political ecology literature (see esp. Brockington, 2002; Dowie, 2009; Igoe, 2004; Neumann, 2002). Dowie (2009), indeed, estimates that as a result of this process between 20 and 50 million “conservation refugees” have been created worldwide. Although this approach has been widely challenged in recent years and in many cases replaced or complemented by a “community-based” approach seeking to integrate conservation and human development priorities (see Borgerhoff Mulder, & Coppolillo, 2005), PAs designated as “wilderness” areas and expressly forbidding human habitation or resource use remain the dominant form of conservation globally (West, Igoe, & Brockington, 2006).

In short, biodiversity conservation has historically sought to separate humans from “nature” to the greatest extent possible. The aim of much environmental education within the CWN paradigm, then, is ironically to bring people back across the divide created to enact conservation in order to increase support for this same conservation. Paradoxically, therefore, as Sandbrook (2015) observes, “Contemporary conservation practice includes two important strategies: trying to separate people and nature in space (in order to protect nature), and trying to reconnect people with nature (to promote human well-being and support for conservation).” Of course, the populations directly targeted by fortress conservation (which generally occurs in low-income societies of the global South) are usually different than those diagnosed with NDD (who generally reside in high-income societies of the global North). Yet even for these latter, the “separation from nature” underlying their NDD is generally the consequence of a longer historical process involving a prior spatial division between areas of human occupation and those reserved for strict “nature” protection as well (see Igoe, 2004).

Newer mechanisms seeking to challenge the fortress model and integrate concerns for human development into conservation programming, however, often paradoxically reinforce this same separation in their efforts to transcend it. Mechanisms like payment for environmental services, biodiversity offsets, and wetlands banking, for instance, all involve efforts to deliver revenue to resource-dependent populations to support conservation as an offset for the impacts of intensified development elsewhere (see Büscher, Dressler, & Fletcher, 2014). The transfer is almost always from North to South, grounded in the rationale that offsets are most efficient when directed to where opportunity costs are lowest. In the process, then, these “neoliberal” conservation mechanisms reinforce a separation between those living in industrialized societies deemed “at risk” of NDD and the “natural” spaces these people are then invited to visit elsewhere. Ecotourism, probably the most common form of support for community-based conservation, is then promoted as a means to overcome this division by transporting participants “back to nature” where their payments can incentivize local conservation efforts (Fletcher, 2014). In this way, the material nature-culture division is effectively globalized.

Toward a political ecology of environmental education

How should environmental education address the issues raised in the preceding discussion? If, as argued previously, the very use of the term “nature” reinforces a sense of opposition between the designated entity and the observing consciousness, then the logical response would be to eliminate the term entirely. Morton (2007, p. 2) thus contends that the very concept of “nature ironically impedes a proper relationship with the earth and its lifeforms,” asserting, “In a society that fully acknowledged that we were always already involved in our world, there would be no need to point it out” (idem, p. 141). Greater attention to the consequences of, and potential alternatives to, use of the “nature” concept as the basis for ecological engagement might therefore aid the cause of environmental education tremendously (Dickinson, 2013). Inspiration for this effort can draw on a growing critical literature seeking to develop new vocabulary that challenges the nature-culture dualism. Hence, Braun and Castree (1998) advance the neologism “socionatures” whereas others differentiate “humans” and “nonhumans” rather than “humans” and “nature” as a whole. Carolan (2005), meanwhile, distinguishes nature, “nature,” and Nature to designate different levels of intersection between human thought and biophysical substance. Although this language points in the right direction, it still generally reproduces to some degree the same sense of distinction between humans and the rest of the biophysical world that it seeks to transcend. More constructive, then, may be Latour's (2004) focus on specific “assemblages” of human and nonhuman “actants,” which does not require opposing either nature to society or humans and nonhumans in toto.

Critics of such approaches, however, worry that the loss of an objective “nature” will undermine our ability to contest environmental degradation altogether (see e g., Derby, Piersol, & Blenkinsop, 2015). Yet abandoning the overarching conceptual category does not necessitate abandoning focus on the specific entities designated by this category, nor does it mean, for all but the most extreme constructivists, giving up the conviction that there exists a biophysical reality (to some degree) independent of human perception, as some critics have interpreted (e.g., Kidner, 2000). Rather, it allows for a more nuanced appreciation of ways in which specific constellations of humans and nonhumans are connected across the traditional nature-culture divide. In this way, it can actually provide a stronger basis for critique of environmental degradation than appeals to “nature,” which invites counter-critique that such degradation is produced by “natural” human inclinations (e.g., for dominance) as well (Carolan, 2005).

This conceptual reorientation must be complemented by a focus on the material power relations shaping the “politics of nature,” something that Latour's framework along with other poststructuralist approaches often neglects (Büscher & Davidov, 2013). After all, what the CWN perspective commonly fails to address most fundamentally is the overarching political economic structures driving environmental degradation. In this way, Dickinson contends, perspectives like the NDD thesis end up supporting a position of

weak sustainability, a term . . . to describe environmental movements that preserve the social and economic relations that cause and perpetuate environmental problems. . . . Unmentioned are the cultural, political, and economic issues that promote dysfunctional human-nature relations and environmental degradation in the first place. (2013, p. 14)

Others identify similar issues in environmental education more generally. Thus Gruenewald contends that environmental education “often neglects the fundamental social and ecological conflicts inherent in the economic system” and thus tends “to give uncritical support to an individualistic, inequitable, and unsustainable growth economy” (2004, p. 79) or even, as Haluza-Delay phrases it, to serve merely as “an ineffectual band-aid on the wounds of the earth and its inhabitants” (2013, p. 394).

In order to correct for this neglect, Haluza-Delay (2013, p. 395) calls for increased “attention to the political-economic systems that negatively impact both natural environments and marginalize social groups” (p. 395). Likewise, Dickinson contends that effective environmental education must “address the cultural, economic, and political systems that contribute to alienation, notably concerning issues that are missing from Louv's conversation—poverty, racial segregation, cultural alienation, environmental racism, and rampant overconsumption” (2013, p. 16).

This position is echoed by research in political ecology, which characteristically calls attention to the political and economic structures and forces influencing natural resource use and degradation (Vandermeer & Perfecto, 2005)—particularly the neoliberal capitalist system that depends essentially upon economic growth to try to reconcile wealth accumulation, poverty alleviation, and, increasingly, environmental protection as well (see esp. Heynen, McCarthy, Robbins, & Prudham, 2007; Büscher, Dressler, & Fletcher, 2014). Space constraints preclude a detailed exploration of what such an approach might look like, but a good example is provided by Vandermeer and Perfecto's Breakfast of Biodiversity (2005), which employs the metaphorical association between a chainsaw felling a tree in a tropical rainforest and cutting a banana onto one's breakfast cereal to illustrate the global assemblages linking consumption in the North to the political economy of commodity production and its environmental consequences in the South. In this way, the interconnection between (specific configurations of) humans and nonhumans within processes of globalized capital accumulation is highlighted without recourse to a monolithic “nature” at all.

In this spirit, we can also encourage reflection on the ways that environmental education itself is implicated within political economic processes—for instance, in growing concern for how EE is increasingly caught up in dynamics of neoliberalization (see Hursh, Henderson, & Greenwood, 2015). From this perspective, the NDD thesis can be reflexively subject to political-ecological analysis. In terms of Marxist ecology, after all, the very sense of separation between humans and an external “nature” that the NDD thesis identifies is commonly seen as a consequence of the “metabolic rift” wrought by a capitalist economy itself in its physical segregation of an urban industrial workforce from a rural peasantry, leading the former to become increasingly alienated (both materially and conceptually) from the biophysical processes on which their lives depend (see Bellamy Foster, 2000; Fletcher & Neves, 2012). Via such analysis, the conditions of possibility for the very perception of “separation from nature” can themselves be made a central focus of environmental education efforts.

Conclusion

Obviously, this brief discussion cannot do justice to the many complex issues highlighted here. In calling critical attention to these issues, however, my hope is that this analysis can help to inspire self-reflection among proponents of the NDD and CWN perspectives, in the interest of developing forms of environmental education that problematize rather than reinforce both the constructed opposition between nature and human culture and the (neoliberal capitalist) political-economic structures exacerbating the environmental degradation that these perspectives seek to combat. As the various contributions to this special issue demonstrate, greater dialogue between environmental educators and political ecologists might aid substantially in this effort.

This is certainly not to dismiss entirely the impulse that underlies calls for greater engagement with a more-than-human world. On the contrary, I agree that entering into deeper and more mutual relationship with nonhumans is vital to our common future. The question is whether understanding this endeavor as promoting “connection with nature” is helpful in this aim. The analysis offered here suggests that it is not.