The relationships between nature, self and place are often expressed in the context of solitude, where nature is a receptacle of personal meanings. In this chapter we discuss these personal meanings of nature and extend it to explore aspects of environmental psychology.

How well do we know nature? We might start by considering the nature of our wisdom about and our intuitive understanding of nature. How far does our search for knowledge remove our intuitive knowledge? This question brings to mind the dialogue between Fuchsia and Steerpike in Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan (Peake, [1946]1968: 274) where Fuchsia feels she doesn’t know anything about nature: “I don’t understand it. I only look at it.” Steerpike’s reply is to the effect that you must understand what you love so much: “You look as though you understand.” Fuchsia says she feels she doesn’t understand wise things and the interesting reply from Steerpike is that is that her knowledge is intuitive: “You have no need of book learning and such like. You only have to gaze at a thing to know it.” We might indeed ponder how the understanding of nature from ‘books and learning’ compares with and relates to our naïve knowing gaze – and how well they each serve us. In this chapter (Section 3.2), we enter a woodland with an ecologist – with all their books and learning – and, by contrast, in Section 5.4 we enter a woodland to gaze around without one.

Cultural associations with nature can be readily found in literature and in art. For example, a poet may write about, or an artist may depict, ‘dappled sunlight in woods’, giving us a benign association of somewhere we may enjoy and perhaps thus cherish. On the other hand, there may be writing about ‘tangled, impenetrable forest’ and visual depictions of darkness and shadows under trees, giving more negative connotations. Such associations can be interpreted in terms of not only showing how we see nature but also as giving insights into how we treat it.

Why do we1 want to keep anything? Surely it is because it means something to us? Isn’t it because we value qualities like usefulness and the ways in which we can cherish memories and meaningful associations? We may keep things which make life easier, help us in day-to-day living and might assist us in some future difficult time. We may also value those things with enriching associations – something we found on a memorable day; something which appealed to us for its form and beauty, its intricacy, diversity or simplicity; something inherited from an ancestor or given to us by a friend or parent. Or it can be something we did not know about but which we found out about in the media or which a teacher, parent or mentor told us was rare, valuable, a privilege to have. Thus, the meaning can be discovered by yourself or a meaning can be given to you by someone else which then becomes significant to you. Whatever the many reasons for keeping something, it is the value and the meanings which make us cherish it: the meanings vary widely, but meanings there have to be. Hence the subtitle of the book: Perspectives on Meanings and Motivations. Meanings are the key.

We tend to think that diversity is good, and indeed we seem to find it psychologically attractive and intellectually interesting. But what does biodiversity mean? It can be applied to some form of enumeration – the number of species – or simply be used as a portmanteau word, referring to ‘wildlife’. In thinking about what biodiversity means, tellingly, Perlman and Adelson (1997): 25) ask: “If biodiversity is good, is more biodiversity always better than less biodiversity?”. Why does having more species matter? In Chapter 1 we asked whether functionality was really the key to why species matter – after all, different species can perform similar functions. And if the functionality of an ecosystem varies, then the system is different – but again we conflate such changes with worth and value judgements. Preference and prejudice seem to confound our thinking.

The quotation “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe” is attributed to the writer H. G. Wells (1866–1946). While often quoted, the actual source of the quotation seems elusive, but I feel that it is relevant here. However, in the context of climate change, as in many other contexts, ‘education’ is much more than about being informed. It is also about ‘education to be wary’ – wary of the easy narrative, the received wisdom, the manufactured dissent and the fact that nothing enhances self-justification as much as a bogeyman – whether an actual person or an assumed problem. Further, I would add ‘education to think carefully’, to question, to realise that you might be being manipulated, to realise how you are being positioned, to read widely, to gain as many views as possible, to be open and to think for yourself. H. G. Wells continued, “Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

It seems that there is a decreasing place for nature. World wildlife populations ‘fall by 58% in 40 years’ runs the BBC News headline for 26 October 2016 at www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37775622. The assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, meeting 29 April–4 May 2019 in Paris) showed a widespread global loss of habitats and species (UN, 2019: www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report). The report is the most comprehensive ever completed and draws from scientists and indigenous and local knowledge. Key conclusions are that current efforts to conserve the earth’s resources are likely to fail without radical action and about one million species are at risk of extinction – one in four of the existing species. Crop security is threatened long-term. Marine pollution has increased tenfold since 1980 (https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1037941). Many of these points are also endorsed in the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s Living Planet Report 2020: https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-gb. Selected, summarised key points are shown in Box 6.1.