Who Cares? The Importance of Emotional Connections with Nature to Ensure Food Security and Wellbeing in Cities

Abstract

Abstract:To be "connected" is "to care", because how and what we care about is influenced, and influences, what we are connected with. Emotional connection predicts environmental concern and children exposed to green environments take this appreciation of nature with them into adulthood. However, the majority of the human population is now living within urban areas, where opportunities for people to interact and bond with nature are greatly diminished, thereby potentially threatening the liveability of cities into the future. Connection with nature has been shown repeatedly to benefit human wellbeing and predict pro-environmental behaviours. By definition "nature" includes urban agriculture, which is also an integral component of a city's foodscape, thereby providing opportunities to improve the wellbeing of city inhabitants as well as help ensure food security. This will only be attainable if the next generation has an emotional connection to nature, and the necessary life skills to help them enter adult life as informed food citizens who make healthy and sustainable decisions for themselves as well as others. This paper reviews existing literature on foodscape (or one's food environment) and biophilia (the love of life or living systems) to highlight the need for inter-disciplinary research that combines urban agriculture and food literacy to ensure future food security and wellbeing of urban inhabitants.

FOODLIT-PRO: Food Literacy Domains, Influential Factors and Determinants—A Qualitative Study

“…This influence of the social context on diverse food-related aspects (such as food choices) can either be supportive of a healthful eating approach (linked to the attribute "social support") or depict a barrier to the endorsement of a balanced food intake (related to the attribute "eating socially: gateway for unhealthier choices"). Consequently, social contexts and agents (such as schools, family and peers) are characterised as enablers of change in light of broader health tendencies [51]. As such, food-related trends (such as having healthful eating practices) may be learned and anchored within diverse social contexts; this would portray social aspects as main drivers to take these food behaviours into action, resulting in the acquisition of a "healthy diet" to be socially trendy.…”

“…Though knowledge constitutes a precondition for this change, it is often not enough to transform individual behaviour (including food-related behaviour [55]; as such, the integration of this attribute as part of a factor of influence intends to acknowledge other psychological mechanisms needed to achieve health behaviour change related with food literacy. Considering that food is a primary indicator of both individual and group identity, a behaviour change technique with a potential to act as mediator for health behaviour change would focus on one's food-related identity [51]. The attribute "identity associated with changed behavior" is a recognised technique that translates how one's self-identification can be connected with the food-related behaviour that is aimed to change [56,57]; the affiliation of this attribute to a food literacy factor of influence aims to recognise the effect that self-identity can have on dietary behaviours.…”

Nature Connection in Early Childhood: A Quantitative Cross-Sectional Study

“…In the last fifteen years there have been many calls to (re-)connect humans, and children in particular, with the natural world [1][2][3]. The two main driving forces behind this move centre around sustainability, with an emotional connection to nature as a motivational factor towards conservation [4,5], and wellbeing [6,7]. Childhood, including early childhood (0-8 years of age) is often considered to play a pivotal role in the creation of an ecological identity and the development of a positive relationship with nature [8] and that association has been supported by several recent studies [9][10][11].…”

Cropping pattern changes diminish agroecosystem services in North and South Dakota, USA

“…Agricultural landscapes may also meet human needs for an appealing aesthetic (Milburn, Brown, & Mulley, ), as evidenced by the persistence of an idealized pastoral scene (Schaman, ). The health benefits of human interaction with nature also extend beyond natural areas, including rural agriculture settings, urban agriculture, and even greenhouses (Keniger et al., ; Uhlmann, Lin, & Ross, ), which is critical due to the high physical and mental health risks associated with farmers (Furey, O'Hora, McNamara, Kinsella, & Noone, ).…”