Increased urbanisation has weakened our connection with the natural world, and played an important role in reducing public awareness on biodiversity. About half the world’s people live in urban areas with increasingly less opportunities for direct contact with nature. This ongoing alienation or ‘extinction of experience‘ has two main interrelated consequences, both of which are profound causes for concern. Firstly, it diminishes the wide range of benefits provided by human-nature interactions for physical health, psychological wellbeing and cognitive performance. Children are particularly sensitive to this progressive disengagement from the natural world. Especially in developed countries, children increasingly suffer from nature-deficit disorder due to reduced time spent playing outdoors, with urgent consequences for health and cognitive development. Secondly, there is mounting evidence from research that less contact with nature during childhood can induce a cycle of disaffection towards the environment, reducing willingness to support conservation initiatives later in life. This creates a feedback loop towards progressive deterioration of the human-nature relationship, extending over generations and detrimental to both humans and the environment.
Education for urban populations
