Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild

Women, low-income groups and members of ethnic communities tend to report more instances of feeling unsafe in urban parks. Different groups report finding spaces threatening, amid fears of persecution and discrimination.

‘When you look at environmental legislation as a whole, the main caveat that gives people the excuse to concrete a garden is this concept of overriding public interest,’ she says.34 ‘This runs through legislation like DNA. Let’s protect that park, or that mountain, but only if it’s in the public interest. It’s this concept of public interest we nee

Nature picked me up by the scruff of my neck, and I rested in her teeth for a while.

People don’t suffer equally from environmental degradation, threat or disaster.

Simply put, we’ve moved inside. We live in cubicles, cars and tower blocks, spending only 1 to 5 per cent of our time outdoors.

ethnic minority groups are less likely to access high-quality natural areas compared with the rest of the population.42 This can potentially exacerbate health inequalities in children, as well as in adolescents and adults,

feeling energized, calmed and restored by being engaged, effortlessly

Schmapped,

extolling the virtues of growing plants, and described it as ‘the marriage of the human psyche with the Great Mother’.14

Awe, then, can shift us away from pure self-interest to be interested in others. It can help us bond and relate to each other. It can turn off the self, the day-to-day concerns, to propel us into focusing on something bigger and hard to comprehend.