An account of experiences written by one of the Nature’s Way team on the UN Climate Change Conference, 2021. Second talk in a series at COP26.
My first two COP26 talks were presented through the lens of a ‘barrister’ in the first, on ecocide law, and then an ‘entrepreneur’ in the second.
In this event, the talks focused on mental health and wellbeing, seen through the lens of communities and faith. The panel was made up of an interesting blend of faith and spiritual leaders, and scientists, an Engineer with expertise in ecology and sustainable architecture and a Doctor of Chemistry.
The panel
The panel included Sister Jayanti Kirpalani, Director of Brahma Kumaris (BK), and special adviser to the UN on Climate Change; Golo J. Pilz, from Germany originally and now living in India, advises on Renewable Energy projects and building and since COP 15 in Copenhagen and has represented the BK Environment Initiative, funded by the German and Indian Governments at the UN climate conferences ever since; and finally Dr David R Hamilton, PhD. David is a writer, columnist and speaker appearing on the panel in his capacity as a ‘kindness scientist’. I’ve heard David speak before, formerly a senior scientist for a large pharmaceutical company, he became disillusioned with the grand promises of medicine for mental health and turned to other solutions including nature and kindness. I recommend listening to him in this podcast. [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/how-to-control-your-mind-dr-david-hamilton-episode-41/id1477035059?i=1000513828892]
Nature’s Way
I booked on this event at COP26 because it addresses the same issues that we are dealing with in the Nature’s Way project: how can we co-design better Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to improve mental health and wellbeing to increase resilience together with communities. Improving mental health post COVID-19 through co-designed NbS was also central to being awarded the research grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Of course we are now all wondering if there will be a post COVID period. We may instead be facing living with COVID on a permanent basis, making nature all the more important to safeguard our wellbeing.
Health and wellbeing
A great deal has been written and said on the value of connection with nature for health and wellbeing, including in other blogs on this web site. So the insightful finding from this event I wanted to share with you now is how connecting with nature is central to kindness. And vice versa.
In an increasingly polarised, chaotic and violent world, nature and its relationship to kindness are increasingly important. By nurturing our connection with nature we are being kind to ourselves. This can be challenging: in our research, we found that some people feel a sense of guilt about making time to personally connect with nature. Is going for that bike ride, walk in the park, meeting up with a group of like minded people, or growing food on an allotment coming at the expense of time with family or work?
We found this ‘guilt’ was particularly felt by people with caring responsibilities e.g. for a disabled child or elderly relative. But paradoxically connecting with nature is especially important for the renewal and regeneration of those with the added pressures of caregiving, whom as we now know are suffering with increased burnout and mental health issues.
A revelation for me, is that kindness, which could be demonstrated spending through time with friends in the outdoors; or going plogging together, is infectious. In fact Kindness has an R0 (for measuring the rate of contagion), just like viruses. At the start of the pandemic kindness was way more infectious than COVID-19, even the more contagious than the Omicron variant. It is believed to be as much as 7-10, but it seems at least initially with the milder symptoms and I’d argue less prevalence of Omicron compared with absolute numbers of incidents of kindness and occurrence and abundance of opportunities nature offers for exceed the incidence of COVID. There is still no comparison.
Meaning
What I came away from this talk with was the importance of nature to our wellbeing in a spiritual sense. Call this whatever you want, if spirituality sounds too abstract and fluffy. Getting into nature grounds us. Nature provides us a sense of purpose and meaning. We start to understand our place in the chaos and order of things. If you do not agree, you have spent too long away from nature, and need to reconnect again.
In the Iceland National Geographic episode of Will Smith’s ‘Welcome to Earth’ series on Disney+, he explores hidden parts of our planet with an accomplished explorer Dwayne Fields, who pushed Will to his limits. In doing so they discover together the power of nature to provide humans with purpose and meaning to their own lives.
Nature and land can feed us, nourish us, both physically and mentally, providing meaning and purpose when the economy and society cannot; even when jobs are being lost due to the virus.
The paradox
I alluded earlier to a paradox. Life on our planet is dying. Most definitely over the next millennium or, as I am convinced, right now. We are living in the anthropocene period, or as it’s also known, the 6th mass extinction event on the planet. Many including myself believe based on the evidence of feedback loops, such as methane release, doomsday (Thwaites) glacier (there are 15 known feedback loops in all), that we have 8-9 years to avert the worst of catastrophes.
Right now we are doing more harm to both the planet and ourselves (including to our mental health) through society and culture; i.e. overconsumption, over use and exploitation of resources, living a lifestyle without questioning. But paradoxically, by improving our connection with nature, and our empathy for each other and all life, we also improve our odds of mitigating the worst of climate disasters already happening and to come.
Faith and community groups have a role in helping people who have lost meaning and purpose in their life, and experienced loneliness and isolation. Such feelings are becoming widespread as we enter the third year of living with COVID19.
As Sister Jayanti and Golo said at the start of the event in making these connections to nature and leading these conversations, regardless of whether you have a religion or faith, or not, for large-scale change (such as saving our planet) to happen, change first needs to begin within, before change can occur externally. Think it, say it, do it. We all need more nature.
Written by Richard Haynes