It has been more than 30 years now since we first started talking about climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the need to change our behaviors. Yes, more than 30 years! In 1992, a 12 year old girl, with the name of Severn Cullis-Suzuki, already silenced the world at the first Earth Summit in Rio with exactly the same messages that Greta Thunberg used to chastise world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019.

For more than 30 years, billions of dollars and incredible amounts of resources have been dispensed on communications about the necessity of a ‘Green Recovery’, yet it still feels like we’re at the foot of the mountain.

While, over the last years, and more specifically since the pandemic, an increasingly amount of people, especially younger generations, have become alarmingly aware of the need to change our behaviors given the challenges ahead, many are still not hearing the message. Business decision makers especially remain seemingly oblivious to the need to drastically change their business models. The reason for this is that most business decision makers perceive “green recovery” as a burden: a burden tied to additional costs, additional reporting, additional regulations, etc. It’s a burden added to the many challenges the ongoing pandemic continues to pose. A burden that they consequently try to avoid, or at least delay, at all costs.

The reasons for this avoidance behavior are obvious. The message that we’ve been exclusively and repeatedly given over the last years is that our CO2 emissions are the major source of harm caused to the environment. Which is true. But what that message has also done is to blame these emissions on all of us, especially businesses, declaring us all guilty of the destruction of our planet.

A guilt that is further deepened as we feel unable to attain unrealistic standards we’ve been blackmailed into by political decision makers--yes, unrealistic, because they should have started 30 years ago. Yet rather than revising them, they intend to stick to them, demanding us to “build back better” by using our guilt about the climate and biodiversity crises as motivation, and slaying us with increasingly strict regulations and reporting if we can’t deliver.

This, in our opinion at L’Université dans la Nature (UdN) is a huge waste of energy and resources as it is completely misaligned with the basic--and scientifically proven--principles of successful communication. Indeed research tells us:

• That people are really good at avoiding feeling guilty: they do everything to downplay the issue, avoid the discussion and delay action as much as possible by arguing that not everything is clear yet,
• That people tend to relatively quickly forget what somebody said or did, but never forget how somebody or something made them feel!

Think about it. The most successful brands and movements are those whose messages are centered around positivity and feel-good emotions, not those that are guilt-tripping us, or instilling fear. They are the ones that make us feel proud to be part of the solution--not guilty of the problem.  

These two principles of ‘belonging’ and ‘feeling good’ are THE two key principles which have been at the forefront of any successful communication campaign within the last decade ; whether that was in the business sector or in the social sector--even in politics!

So, give us one single reason why we are not using these principles to convince people and businesses to committing to a “green recovery”?

That is exactly what we are doing at L’Université dans la Nature. These principles are at the core of our approach; an approach that is so crucial in creating change, yet so overlooked, that we felt the need to set up our European branch of UdN in Luxembourg, so that we may spread our scope of action.

It is our objective to reconnect people to nature in a positive, educative and experiential way. With that in mind, UdN has gathered and studied more than 3,000 research papers about the impact of nature on the physical and mental well-being of human. Based on these findings we have developed scientifically tested programs that seek to re-connect adults, children, decision makers, employees (you name them) to nature. We do this by facilitating experiences that allow people to feel the positive effects of nature on their mental and physical well-being AND explain and help them understand why this is. In order to make these programmes more accessible world-wide, we have recently started certified leadership trainings to expand our base of educators.

Furthermore, our scope includes conferences, podcasts, articles and social media contributions detailing the positive impact that nature has on human health, as well as the health care systems, but also the huge impact it could potentially have for businesses and the economy.

Did you know for example that on one side:

• There is an estimated cost of $1 trillion USD per year in lost productivity to the global economy as a result of mental illness within the workplace,
• In recent years, General Motors spent more on health care than it did on steel
• 73% of employees (UK) in the banking and financial services industries are looking for better physical and mental wellbeing support in the workplace

And on the other side, research shows that:

• Participants in a simple forest activity benefited from the following impacts, which were not observed in an urban control group:

12.4% decrease in cortisol levels,
7.0% decrease in sympathetic nerve activity,
1.4% decrease in systolic blood pressure,
5.8% decrease in heart rate,
As well as a 55% increase of parasympathetic nerve activity, indicating a state of relaxation.

• In contrast to constructed environments, exposure to natural environments resulted in decreased impulsive decision-making and a possible increase in cooperation.
• Natural elements buffer the relationship between role stressors and job satisfaction, depressed mood, and anxiety; a view of natural elements is related to high view satisfaction, and that high view satisfaction is related to high work ability and high job satisfaction.
• Increased contact with vegetation may provide a low-cost, high-gain approach to employee well-being and effectiveness.
• Compared to a “lean office”, employees exposed to nature experience a 15% increase in productivity, feel more engaged and better about their work.
• Four days of immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from media and technology, increased performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50% in a group of naive hikers.
• The economic value of protected areas derived from the improved mental health of visitors is US$ 6 trillion per annum.
• The economic value of biodiversity is estimated at €100 trillion

And these are just a few examples!

So, what if we completely revised our approach? What if instead of organizing the protection of nature under the threat of catastrophe and doom, we actually gave people hope and a vision, and made them care? Like Jane Goodall said, “if you do things and don’t have hope, why bother?” Avoiding a cataclysm is a meager hope. But creating a world in which nature is considered a tool for public health, social justice and mental equilibrium, now that is a stimulating project we can all get behind.

Look at it from the eyes of a child. Already exhausted by the pandemic, the message they are picking up every day is that the world Is ending. That the forests, oceans and polar bears are disappearing, and that it’s because of humans, because of us, and well, them. What hope of a future are we leaving them? What vision? What feelings? Wouldn’t we much more benefit from using the splendor of our nature to reconcile them with this world, and with their own existence? Imagine what passionate leaders we would raise!

Our objective at L’Université dans la Nature is to reconnect: to help people and decision makers discover and feel the real value of nature, and as such, make them realize that we are part of nature as much as it is part of us. And by re-instilling that relationship, a relationship built on positive emotions, rather than guilt, that is how we will finally get people and decision makers to care.

And, conveniently for us, it just so happens that it’s been scientifically proven that “people tend to take care of things, they care about.“

Hubert Mansion is founder and vice-chair of L’Université dans la Nature, Raymond Schadeck is chair of L’Université dans la Nature