A walk in the woods, a hike around the mountains, a walk along the shore – for some it's a dream, for others it's a nightmare. In fact, while most people value nature and the natural world, a growing minority may fear them, experiencing fear, anxiety and disgust when it comes to nature, according to a new US study. Frontiers in ecology and the environment.
“Research has long suggested that people generally experience positive emotions towards nature,” said Johan Kjellberg Jensen, study author from Lund University in Sweden, according to press release. “We explored the opposite, that is, when negative attitudes towards nature occur, and gathered knowledge about how it occurs, what consequences it has and how it can be reversed.”
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Biophobia, fear of nature
Since we are natural beings ourselves, it would make sense for our species to encourage positive feelings towards plants and animals. But there are several studies and articles, including in Trends in ecology and evolution And People and natureThis suggests that people's ideas about nature are actually much more complex: some people feel a natural attraction to nature, while others feel a natural aversion.
In an effort to understand this surprising complexity, Kjellberg Jensen and a team of researchers turned to approximately 200 scientific studies and compiled their findings. By reviewing research from teams in Sweden, Japan and the United States, researchers have created a comprehensive framework for studying the causes and consequences of “biophobia,” or fear of nature, and its treatment.
Specifically, they found that nature aversion arises from a combination of factors, including a person's environment and exposure to nature and natural environments, as well as their emotions, mental and physical health. Their concept also highlights that people's views of nature, and the plants and animals within it, are deteriorating and may continue to deteriorate as people spend more of their time indoors.
“Urbanization, combined with parental attitudes, can increase negative feelings and perceptions of danger in nature among children,” added Kjellberg Jensen in a press release, “which is especially relevant as more and more children grow up in cities.”
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Fighting the fear of nature
Whatever the reasons, the consequences of biophobia are obvious. Contrary to conservation and public health efforts, aversion to nature, as the team's concept suggests, can cause hostility toward species, regardless of whether those species are harmful, harmless, or beneficial to humans, and can prevent people from benefiting from nature's many benefits to human health, including its ability to soothe the painrelieves stress and improves symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Therefore, the team argues that it is critical to increase our exposure to nature and invest in natural spaces And nature reserves to prevent our fear of the natural world, both today and in the future.
“The phenomenon of biophobia is broad and requires a variety of tools,” added Kjellberg Jensen in a press release. “In some cases it is about increasing knowledge and contact with nature; in others it may be about reducing points of conflict between people and nature. We need to better understand the mechanisms underlying negative emotions to reverse this trend.”
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