Living In A City Doesn’t Have To Mean Living Disconnected From Nature
Interacting with nature is important for the health and well-being of individuals and communities as it promotes physical exercise, facilitates clean and healthy environments, and helps us fulfill basic evolutionary human needs. However, living in an urban environment with development and technology surrounding every aspect of life can make forming deep and intimate personal connections with nature difficult. The purpose of this project was to understand how and why urban residents can and should develop connections with nature by partaking in environmental stewardship activities not only for the health of local ecology but also to promote individual health and well-being. To accomplish this, I extensively reviewed the literature on the various individual benefits to health and well-being that interacting with nature has and the different ways this can be achieved. Additionally, I also conducted an internship with Weed Warriors- Nature Stewards Program; performing environmental restoration work, assisting in carrying out various environmental outreach programs, and developing native plant learning content for the organizations community garden web-page. Using the insight from my research and experiences, I used a critical lens to evaluate the effectiveness of the different environmental stewardship activities that I performed at promoting the individual benefits of interacting with nature. I found that activities which are hands-on, interactive, as well as those that inspire and equip people to become actionable agents in their societies to be the best for effectively engaging people with environmental stewardship while simultaneously maximizing the personal benefits they are able to gleam from the experience. As the population of cities continues to grow, environmental problems perpetuate, and the conveniences of technological innovation and development expand, it is important to understand not only how, but why urban residents in all communities can and should develop bonds with their natural surroundings.
