Considering the mental health implications of nature conservation

19.07.2024 | Biodiversity and People, Research, TOP NEWS

Based on a joint text by Imperial College London and the University of Oxford

We gain a variety of health and wellbeing benefits from biodiversity – everything from physical benefits, like better cardiovascular health, to psychological benefits, like improvements to mood and lower fatigue. But nature also sustains the economic and material dimensions of people’s lives that support their mental health: access to resources and income, as well as nature’s role in personal and communal identity.
 
Researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Imperial College London, and the University of Kent, have published a new framework in One Earth for policymakers and public health professionals to understand the connections between mental health and conservation, which captures the diverse direct and indirect relationships between mental health and nature loss.
 
“We don’t know much about how the global nature crisis will affect mental health. Most research in this area has overlooked how nature supports the socioeconomic fabric of people’s lives that underpin their mental health,” says lead author Dr Thomas Pienkowski, who completed this work as part of his PhD at the University of Oxford and is now at Imperial College London.
 
The framework explains how nature’s material contributions, like wild-harvested foods, products, and building materials, affect the ‘social determinants’ of mental health – and how losing these contributions, like the collapse of fisheries, can worsen stressors like poverty. The researchers also wanted to explore how conserving biodiversity might impact mental health by changing how nature’s benefits are distributed and accessed or creating direct effects through conservation projects.
 
The research has a particular focus on the Global South, where many people rely on natural resources to meet their basic needs.
 
“The current body of knowledge predominantly represents high-income, English-speaking, and urban populations. This skewed focus motivated our paper to highlight the urgent need to include people who rely directly on nature for their survival,” explains co-author Dr Rachel Oh, Postdoctoral Research Associate at UFZ and iDiv. “For them, restoring, maintaining and/or improving ecosystem functions is crucial, as it ensures the continued supply and, therefore, access to vital natural resources necessary for their survival, health, and wellbeing.”
 
The team hope that the framework helps conservationists to consider the mental health implications of the different strategies that they take. Dr Pienkowski adds an example:
 
“Governments around the world have committed to expanding area-based conservation to 30% of the world’s surface by 2030, which will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. That expansion could take the form of relatively strict protected areas that exclude people. Our framework suggests that such an approach might undermine progress towards global mental health goals. 
 
Alternatively, other approaches could support local communities and Indigenous groups in managing landscapes in ways that benefit nature while also supporting local livelihoods and cultures. These approaches may help support residents’ mental health by recognising their rights to natural resources, land, culture, and self-determined governance systems.”
 
Original publication
(Researchers with iDiv affiliation are bolded)
 
Pienkowski, T., Keane, A., Booth, H., Kinyanda, E., Fisher, J.C., Lawrance, E., Oh, R. R. Y., and Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2024). Nature’s contributions to social determinants of mental health and the role of conservation. One Earth, DOI: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(24)00247-1

Contact:

Christine Coester
Media and Communications
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
EMail: christine.coester@idiv.de

Dr Ruy Ying Rachel Oh
Postdoctoral Researcher in the Ecosystem Services research group
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany
Phone.: +49 341 9733121
EMail: rachel.oh@idiv.de
Web: https://www.idiv.de/en/profile/1414.html

Note for the media: Use of the pictures provided by iDiv is permitted for reports related to this media release only, and under the condition that credit is given to the picture originator.