Why we should focus on Human Wellbeing for Environmental Conservation and Rewilding
Is it possible to balance human society with our planet’s ecological needs?
I’ve been pondering this question for awhile now — through my travels in Africa, Borneo and South East Asia, my work in Australia and New Zealand, and most recently living and working in Wellington.
I see it as important for so many reasons — whether it’s for the species which are rapidly being driven to extinction, to mitigate the effects of climate change, for the ecosystem services, or the innumerable human-related reasons — such as our mental health, inspiration, tighter-knit friendships & communities or even for business innovation.
There must be a win-win in balancing human needs and those of wider biological life, because in today’s world — one can’t function without the other.
I recently wrote about how wildness and wellbeing are self-reinforcing, but I felt like one of the things that didn’t come across particularly well was my evolving theory of change.
Hypothesis:
if we improve human wellbeing, humans will improve their relationship with the rest of Earth’s biota
For the last 2 years, I’ve been learning about human wellbeing through my work with NZ social lab, Lifehack, and kept seeing patterns emerging in research around people’s connection to nature as I outlined in this post. What doesn’t seem to have been so well researched from what I can see, is how people act toward the ‘natural world’ when they are ‘flourishing’.
So where to from here?
Very few environmental conservation & rewilding projects pay attention to human wellbeing from my experience. They range from paying staff to engage in conservation & restoration activities, to building volunteer teams and engaging with the wider community to gain environmental outcomes for the area.
I believe there’s a greater opportunity which the environmental sector must focus on, if we are to make the kinds of breakthroughs we need for a flourishing natural world, as well as human society.
The Opportunity:
Build human wellbeing techniques and activities into the heart of environmental restoration projects.
This is a fairly foreign concept to many environmental restoration organisations, managers and groups — so I’ll expand on this a little, to help explain how we might do it in the context of a typical grassroots project.
What I propose is a little more work for a lot more impact.
I’ll speak more about some of the benefits of it later.
Firstly, let’s define an active human wellbeing framework:
Image courtesy of Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand
This framework comes from a piece of research from NEF in the UK which outlines strategies that people can take in their everyday lives to improve their wellbeing.
Let’s overlay this framework onto a regular volunteering experience — I’ll use a tree planting day as an example.
Introduction, Health & Safety and Activities
Most volunteering activities would start with briefing about the project itself — sometimes at the tool shed, a nursery, or on the site itself. It’s an opportunity to tell people about the project, and then outline health & safety procedures for the site and tools, and also to share the kinds of activities which people would be undertaking that day.
Connect
Why: Done well, we can build trust and connection relatively quickly and meaningfully. We thrive when we’re truly connected to one another deeply, so whilst there’s an art to this, dedicating time and energy to it throughout the day will pay dividends for your project.
Give volunteers — old and new — a chance to make a meaningful connection with at least one person in the group. This is about going beyond a ‘round of names’, and more into who they really are: why are they here? what do they hope to gain from the experience?
How: Invite people to share in small groups of two or three people — ideally with one or two people they’ve not met before. Give them a couple of questions to start with — they’ll do the rest. Small groups generally work better than big groups, and if you provide 5–10 minutes per person, everyone can speak and get to know someone within 15 minutes.
Bonus: here’s a blog post about connecting people in the New Zealand context.
Also ‘Connect’ should relate to people feeling connected to the land. You can add another activity later in the day which helps people do this — such as a 5 minute ‘silent sit’, a ‘nature observation’ or other sensory acitivity. Some examples can be found on the Project Wildthing site.
Give
Why: generosity is proven to benefit us in so many ways. Making people more aware of their own generosity will instill a sense of pride and reinforce the impact for their own wellbeing.
How: The majority of the volunteers will be giving their time willingly and wholeheartedly (although people do volunteer for many reasons — see my posts here and here). Simply thanking people at the end of the day’s activities is a good way of ensuring people reflect on their own generosity. Finding a way of recognising their time is also worthwhile where possible — such as sending them all a photo of the team and their work in the week after the event.
Bonus: if you want to go a little further, here’s an article on a gratitude exercise which the whole group could do at the end of the day for one another.
Take Notice
Why: Reflecting is something people aren’t often invited to do in their daily lives, and it’s a powerful way of helping people reinforce their new learnings, and nurturing better volunteers & team members over time.
How: Ask questions in individual & group contexts to help people better reflect. Ask questions about the trees you’re planting, what new things people have learned, what people most enjoyed, etc.
Bonus: here’s a range of ways to stop and smell the roses from MHF.
Keep Learning
Why: Often people who volunteer have an active curiosity about things, and love to pick up new knowledge or share what they know with others. Creating a culture of learning at your events will keep people coming back, as well as supporting them to become more engaged and useful volunteers over time.
How: Having a few field guides around so that people can pick up a book and find out more about the species around them is a great practical way to enable people to learn at their own pace. Another approach could be pick a new species, landmark, skill, or other feature of your project each week — learn something new yourself, and then share it.
Bonus: the 8 principles of experiential education are a useful background for helping people learn outside a classroom environment.
Be Active
Why: physical activity is great for our health and wellbeing, and people will build their stamina over time. One of the model examples of this is Green Gym.
How: get people warmed up early on in the day, ideally after the ‘Connect’ time, through some simple warm up exercises (the kind you might do before a light jog). Another way of helping people get exercise is to take the team on a site walk, rotate roles (such as carrying plants, digging, planting and more), and encourage further stretching throughout the activites.
Bonus: check out some fun ‘improv’ warm ups which can be great physically active games which also can blend with ‘Connecting’ with others to build trust and rapport.
The Impact:
When people thrive + have positive experiences in nature, their actions toward environmental causes will radically improve
I have personally seen people’s behaviour changing, with wide ripples heading out into their lives, and I only had a small portion of these techniques and ideas whilst I was working in Borneo, Australia & New Zealand. I continue to receive messages five years later from people who volunteered with my organisations, sharing what they’re up to, and how a week or two spent with us has changed their life and their attitude to environmental issues.
At a conservation & rewilding level, we will need a large number of volunteers who are actively involved around the world. At a global level, we’ll need high functioning people who are creative, empathetic, and innovative. Building human wellbeing into our environmental projects will help us with both of these.
If we’re going to surmount the many environmental challenges we’re seeing emerging around the world, then we will need a range of new tactics — from subtler socio-cultural interventions, to new technologies, policy changes, adaptation strategies and much more.
Now I want to see if we can get some empirical evidence for the hypothesis I outlined. We’ll be needing some great researchers from universities who are interested in the intersection of environmental issues, behaviour change, psychology and wellbeing.
If you can help, or know someone who can, I’d love to hear from you on Twitter or you can get in touch through my personal site.
You can also learn more about the project where I hope to capture more of these insights — Volunteer Impact.
