How welcome is the current explosion in the media (books, guides, blogs, articles, tv and radio programmes) on the benefits of connecting with nature.

The first of the 2020 brilliant Out Of Doors series of programme on BBC Radio Scotland was dedicated to connectivity with nature, mostly through trees, in Scotland and beyond, a connectivity that spanned music and art as well as mental and physical health benefits

Connecting with nature should be easy. It surrounds us, and we are ourselves part of nature. From early TQM and worship facilitation days, I used getting out of the classroom, hotel or business conference room for a walk as means of introducing more energy and creativity into the sessions. Indeed my approach to connecting, although not called that in the 1990’s (I referred to this as finding your site spot to think) was to

• Find a nice spot
• Sit
• Notice things
• Thats it

Today we may add do not share the experience through social media, its yours – something inconceivable back in those 1990’s business or university construction improvement modules.

Yet, as we spend 90%+ of our time indoors, getting out into green space to find that nice spot is not easy for all. We are greening our buildings and spaces with biophilic design, more green landscaping, and great initiatives:

The 10 minute initiative is a USA mayoral programme to ensure everyone in their cities has high-quality park or green space within 10-minute walk of their home or office. Whilst this sounds a great, just try walking in a city for 10, even 5 minutes, through our typical built environments, it is quite a stretch.

We have wonderful green community spaces emerging within our inner cities. I visited the Phoenix Community Garden in London recently as research for a possible community garden in our local Lancashire town. We need more of this.

London contractor Modus, encouraging project staff and operatives to eat lunch in green space through maps showing where they can find green space close to the project.

But connecting with nature is not just about health …

In FutuREstorative I referred to biophilia as the Secret Sauce for Sustainability. The more biophilic connectivity with nature we have within our built environment, the better the access to real nature connectivity, then the better our sustainability behaviour, and importantly the better our creativity and imagination for regenerative climate crisis solutions.

This is reinforced by the current research published from the European Centre for Environment & Human Health looking more closely at the habits of 24,000 in the UK, highlighting:

• Increase in nature visits led to increase in general environmental behaviour.
• Increase in nature appreciation was associated with increase in behaviour.
• Neighbourhood nature had direct and indirect effects via visits and appreciation.
• Evidence emerged of nature visits compensating for low neighbourhood nature.
• Effects of neighbourhood nature differed across specific environmental behaviours.