A global synthesis of trends in human experience of nature

Abstract

The popular perception that humans are undergoing a global extinction of “experience of nature” (EoN) is poorly supported by empirical evidence. Here, we provide – to the best of our knowledge – the first global systematic review of trends in EoN, identifying only 18 studies that measured temporal trends in EoN. Of those 18 studies, several reported negative trends over time for both direct EoN (for example, in-person visits to parklands) and vicarious EoN (specifically, the presence of nature in cultural products, such as movies or books), and all were biased toward North America, Western Europe, and Japan. As an initial proxy for understudied regions, we calculated past trends in three metrics of global EoN opportunities and show that, over the past decades, the locations where humans live have shifted away from the natural world and become more urban, while forest cover in cities has decreased. Overall, our results suggest that while EoN may be declining globally, existing evidence is insufficient to assess the magnitude and generality of this phenomenon.