Nature as a Commodity: What's Good for Human Health Might Not Be Good for Ecosystem Health

Frontiers in Psychology

Yol¹ 

关键词: nature-related wellbeing;    urban biodiversity;    nature therapy;    nature doses;    greenspaces;    nature exposure;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01673

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Are you getting enough Vitamin N? Richard Louv (2008) coined this term in his book “Last Child in the Woods,” in response to growing evidence that suggests humans are increasingly disinterested with, and disconnected from the natural world. Concurrent with the literature on the extent of disconnection (Miller, 2005; Soga et al., 2016; van Heezik and Hight, 2017) is an ever-expanding body of literature documenting the many psychological, physical, and spiritual health benefits derived from nature contact (Keniger et al., 2013; Bratman et al., 2015; Martyn and Brymer, 2016; Frumkin et al., 2017). In fact human survival is inextricably linked with nature: the species and their inter-relationships that make up the fabric of ecosystems function to sustain all life on Earth. Biodiversity in all landscapes, including urban ones, provides humans with essential ecosystem services, such as food provisioning, climate and flood regulation, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and pollution reduction (Elmqvist et al., 2015). Frameworks have been proposed for evaluating the economic value of biodiversity (Edwards and Abivardi, 1998), with more recent approaches acknowledging the inter-play between social well-being, economic sustainability, and biodiversity and ecosystem function (Tzoulas et al., 2007; Laurila-Pant et al., 2015). These socio-cultural valuation techniques recognize that biodiversity provides society with benefits, such as mental well-being, ethical, spiritual and cultural values, as well as economic values. Psychological well-being benefits have been positively associated with the number of species perceived by people in the environments around them (Fuller et al., 2007; Dallimer et al., 2012). Loss of biodiversity reduces the efficiency by which ecological communities perform ecosystem services, as well as the stability of ecosystem function over time (Cardinale et al., 2012).

【 授权许可】

CC BY