Nature: intangible well-being as a gift

No studies are needed to realize it, experience is enough. Being in nature is healing. Not only because, as Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in his love letter to Mother Earth, we are Nature. But because we live it directly: the desire for a breath of fresh air, a walk in the woods, a few hours in the garden or in the vegetable garden, a little relaxation on a blanket in a lawn or in the city park . That with nature is not only a relationship of supplying goods such as water, raw materials, food, but it is also a contact that alleviates doubts, worries, discomfort to make room for serenity. While experiencing it on a personal level, however, it seems that we do not fully believe in it: in fact we do very little to preserve that nature that continues to give us free and unconditionally a desired and yet appreciated condition of well-being.

So let’s try the results of a recent study to see if we can convince ourselves of it. In particular that of the University of Tokyo and its Program in Sustainability Sciences together with the Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), in which the researchers systematically reviewed over 300 articles on ecosystem cultural services and made it possible to identify the impact of nature on man in terms of non-material well-being. A transversal operation that has made it possible to identify 16 mechanisms or types of connection, such as aesthetic or recreational, through which people experience these effects in terms of spirituality, health, creativity, training. In this way, a field of research has been reorganized with hitherto fragmented contributions for methods, units of measurement, places and demographic aspects, important data but which made it difficult to identify common models and aspects that influenced human well-being in a transversal and universal way.

A study that the researchers themselves still admit as incomplete, above all because it does not adequately explore the possible contributions that the experience of indigenous communities could make, societies characterized much more than ours by a deep and respectful contact with nature, but in every case an instrument that could become an important reference for a policy that does not look exclusively to the well-being of individuals, but also to its implications in community terms, deployed through the care and protection of intangible benefits as well.

The Tokyo Municipality has already accepted this invitation, giving researchers a mandate to explore the effects of ecosystemic cultural benefits in urban spaces, a follow-up to a study that aims to detect in the field the intersections between nature and human well-being, in the hope that a better understanding of the many connections that bind man to nature become an opportunity for political decision-makers to design appropriate interventions not only to protect and better manage the sustainability of ecosystems, but also to enhance their connections with human well-being.

That of the University of Tokyo is a work that intersects other researches related to the relationship between man and nature, such as a research conducted by the Department of Landscape Architecture of the National Chin-YI University of Technology in Taiwan, which notes for example how the houseplants are not just an aesthetic embellishment for homes without an outdoor space such as a garden or vegetable garden (UK statistics, for example, tell us that mostly young people and ethnic minorities are in this situation), but also a precious support to improve our mental health. Even minimal lack of access to nature has been linked to symptoms of depression, anxiety, asthma, cardiovascular difficulties and impaired immune functions. On the other hand, the care of the greenery (gardens or indoor plants) improves the feeling of well-being and lowers stress levels, increasing positive emotions like a bike ride or a walk.

Benefits therefore, those that plants offer us, which go beyond the absorption of pollutants such as CO2 emissions resulting from numerous human activities, nitrogen dioxide resulting from traffic, fine particles of dust and volatile organic compounds such as those emitted by use. deodorants, detergents, household products, paints. Even just being in the presence of plants, at home or at work, not only increases the humidity of the air and prevents the formation of viruses, fungi and irritation to the eyes, skin, throat and nose, but also increases the general sense of well-being and cognitive performance that include focus, selection, use of memory, pain tolerance, and the data improve if the plants are green, with dense and rounded leaves (not at all to denigrate the beneficial effect of a simple Epiprem num aureum, known as the common Pothos). Effects that we can intuit also expand with an increase in the sense of connection, satisfaction, charm, resilience and overcoming trauma.

Whether it’s a hobby at home or a time spent in the forest or in the woods, nature is here to encourage us to balance, resilience, expression, care, giving us benefits that will often be intangible, but that will make us touch. a deep sense of fullness and fulfillment.