“Nature helps you to easily understand what’s bothering you and how to deal with it. It also helps to fill the void in your heart and helps when you feel lonely.”
New research on the townships of South Africa shows something the wise and little children know: that people find “peace, calm, and perspective while visiting the forest.” When we are in the forest, we can work through our negative feelings, find peace and forgiveness, gain perspectives about conflict or abuse, and move toward hope. These are important to all people, but they are especially acute to the poor. What does this mean?
We should understand the forest and our natural heritage as something much more profound than a good or a nice addition. It is a fundamental component of well-being for all people. While forests and other ecosystems may provide services to use like carbon or water cycling, habitat, or recreation, they also shape our identities, our senses of longing and belonging, rootedness, and transcendent connection.
This research tells me two things. First, around the world our development efforts to lift people out of poverty and work with communities to ensure good health, education, and nutrition must also be linked to conservation and support of nature and access to it. In a sense, this is an essential stitching together of a number of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals from ending poverty to supporting life on land. Second, it shows that we are a biophilic species, a reverent creature meant to be in communion with our brothers and sisters of many species. When we are in the forest, the forest is in us. And that is good.
Peter Walks for Democracy 