INTERVIEW
The author, conservationist and nature-deficit expert on the importance of connecting with the natural world
Author, conservationist and nature-deficit expert Richard Louv on the importance of connecting with nature
Richard Louv wants you to drop this magazine and go outside. Right now. If you have any, take your kids. When the term “nature-deficit disorder” first appeared in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our
Children from Nature-deficit Disorder, the concept began stirring up an international movement to connect children, families and whole communities with the natural world — a critical ingredient in healthy human development and for our emotional and psychological well-being. Since then, he’s co-founded the international Children & Nature Network and penned more influential books, the most recent being Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives — and Save Theirs. Here, he discusses this work and what’s changed since Last Child.
On why it was time to write Our Wild Calling
In the book’s introduction, I describe an encounter with a black fox on a trail on Kodiak Island, Alaska. For me, moments like that have an unexpected transformational quality, so I asked friends, colleagues, strangers — scientists, psychologists, theologians, trackers, teachers, physicians, traditional healers and a polar explorer — to share their stories. I was curious about the impact of these experiences on their
psychological, physical and spiritual health, and about what seems to be an altered state of consciousness during these encounters, particularly in the sense of time and space, and how such moments both enlarge and humble us. I hope this book stimulates more appreciation of how wild animals shape us and how we shape them, which is particularly important as people and wild animals live in increasingly close proximity, including in our cities.
On what’s changed since Last Child was published
The barriers between people and nature remain challenging, but we’ve seen change. In the United States, there has been progress among legislatures and government agencies, schools, businesses and civic organizations, and family nature clubs are proliferating. Regional and national campaigns are bringing together people from across political, religious and economic divides to connect children to nature. In 2015, for example, the White House launched the “Every Kid in a Park” initiative, so all fourthgraders and their families have free admission to national parks and other federal lands and waters.
A recent study in the U.S., “The Nature of Americans,” suggests that we appear to be more knowledgeable than a decade ago about the connection between nature and health, but are less aware of its connection to cognitive functioning and education.
On how cities of the future could connect people with nature
Why not imagine a “New Nature Movement” that would include, but goes beyond traditional environmentalism and sustainability to touch every part of a society? A first step might be convening politicians, policy-makers, volunteers, educators, landscape architects, urban designers and architects, physicians and others to plan the best approaches to re-naturing a community. They could then write a health prescription for a city that would evolve into a practical rebuilding plan. They might consider how to rebuild local food webs, establish an urban forest or encourage urban wildlife. They could talk about how to naturalize bicycle and pedestrian paths, offer cleaner public transport, develop policies to encourage the design of green roofs, green walls and green schoolyards.
Cities can be engines of biodiversity. As designer William Mcdonough, who has done extensive work in China, suggests, communities should be created that not only reduce our carbon footprints, but also create wetlands and other wildlife habitat, even in densely populated cities.
On what individuals can do
Even in China and Brazil, there’s an intense and growing interest in what was lost as people transitioned from rural areas to huge cities: direct experience in nature and all its benefits. In Toronto, the David Suzuki Foundation has taken up the challenge of creating a “homegrown national park” — an idea originated by my friend Doug Tallamy, an entomologist, ecologist and author of Bringing Nature Home.
He argues that everyday gardeners are key to reviving urban biodiversity, that it is in their power to help reverse the global biodiversity collapse.