The UK has the lowest connection to nature in Europe. This is a shocking statement – in both the surprising and causing indignation senses. But, much as you may not like it, it is one which brings to light harsh truths and grave concerns. It is also a statement whichmotivated mywork. People need to feel a connectionwith nature if they are to save it. What chance dowe have of addressing and reversing climate change if a large number of people do not care about our planet in the first place? It has been suggested that society's ability to affect climate change is not down to a lack of technological resources, but to a crisis in educational communication. For many years, I worked in a specialised sector that enacts a natureknowledge economy. Materially and conceptually tethered to a situated form of knowledge production, this is learning in the outdoors, or as practitioners describe it, Outdoor Learning (OL). The first record of OL comes in 1760, by a ‘Demonstrator of Plants’ for Apothecaries’ apprentices. By 2023, a bewildering array of ‘planned and purposeful facilitated approach[es] led by an instructor, teacher, leader, coach, guide’ will be offered to the UK educationmarket. INTRODUCING THE GREENMONSTER I wondered about new knowledge, coming from the wider fields of climate science and social psychology, and how it was being picked up by outdoor learning’s not-for-profit subsector and translated into valuable educational products. Ideally, these new products would be ones which consider making nature-connectedness a durable reality for learners. Nature, heuristically reduced to the cupboard we go to for resources to create economic well-being, is creating anxiety in youngsters. Whilst consuming a media diet of environmental breakdown and human catastrophe, they are at the same time called upon by politicians to be less activistic. It is little wonder we have ‘Eco-Anxiety’ – a “chronic fear of environmental doom”. Unfolding as humanity attempts to foster a new approach to human-nature well-being, 48 |
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