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Human-environment connections are the subject of much study, and the details of those connections are crucial factors in effective environmental management. In a large, interdisciplinary study of the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem involving disciplines from physical oceanography to anthropology, one of the research teams examined commercial fisheries and another looked at subsistence harvests by Alaska Natives. Commercial fisheries and subsistence harvests are extensive, demonstrating strong connections between the ecosystem and the humans who use it. At the same time, however, both research teams concluded that the influence of ecosystem conditions on the outcomes of human activities was weaker than anticipated. Likely explanations of this apparently loose coupling include the ability of fishers and hunters to adjust to variable conditions, and the role of social systems and management in moderating the direct effects of changes in the ecosystem. We propose a new conceptual model for future studies that incorporates a greater range of social factors and their dynamics, in addition to similarly detailed examinations of the ecosystem itself.

Despite many environmental studies, the literature lacks studies emphasizing the significant nature of the human–environment connection. This study focuses on the impact of manufacturing environmental practices on social performance, which is crucial for employees’ wellbeing, human development, and quality of life that lacks empirical evidence. This study searches for a mechanism to enhance social performance through sustainable practices and test the mediating effects of environmental collaboration. This study examines the proposed hypotheses on the data sample of 120 Malaysian manufacturing firms, with partial least squares structural equation modeling. Explicitly, the results reveal sustainable practices comprised of purchasing social responsibility (PSR), long term orientation (LTO), supplier assessment (SA), and environmental collaboration (EC) contribute almost 50% of social performance. Still, LTO and SA are the best practices. PSR, LTO, and SA significantly contribute 45% of EC, but LTO and PSR remain the best sustainable practices. Firms investing in these sustainable practices of improving social performance, driven by sustainability, show these are worthy strategies. Concentrating on certain sustainable practices could improve employees’ wellbeing, human development, and quality of life. The novel contribution of the study is the formulation of social performance and its empirical work testing the mediating effects of EC between sustainable practices and social performance.

The human relationship with nature is a topic that has been explored throughout human history. More recently, the idea of connection to nature has merged as an important transdisciplinary field of study. Despite increased scholarly attention to connection to nature, the notion of disconnection from nature remains undertheorized and understudied. In this perspective article, we argue for a more comprehensive understanding of disconnection from nature to strengthen theories of human‐nature relationships that goes beyond individual relationships and considers social and collective factors of disconnection, including institutional, socio‐cultural and power dimensions. Drawing on case insights, we present the ‘wheel of disconnection’ to illustrate how disconnections from nature manifest across individual or societal meaning‐making processes, thereby problematizing existing research that seeks to create dualisms between human positive and negative impacts on the environment in isolation from cultural or political contexts. We do not seek to discount research or important practical efforts to foster an individual's connection to nature by elevating disconnection. Instead, we hope that creating greater awareness and understanding of disconnection will be able to guide opportunities going forward for strengthening a connection to nature along a continuum from the individual to the social. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Human-nature interactions are complex and have important implications for achieving sustainable development goals and addressing other global challenges. Although numerous studies have explored human-nature (or human-environment) interactions and generated useful insights, they are largely disintegrated. Because conceptual frameworks are the foundation of quantitative and qualitative integration, many have been proposed but focus mainly on human-nature interactions within a specific system. To reflect human-nature interactions between distant coupled systems, the framework of telecoupling (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) has been developed. However, no framework has explicitly integrated human-nature interactions between adjacent coupled systems, let alone within a coupled system as well as between adjacent and distant coupled systems simultaneously. To fill such an important gap, in this paper I present an integrated framework of metacoupling: human-nature interactions within a system (intracoupling), between distant systems (telecoupling), and between adjacent systems (pericoupling). A metacoupled system is a set of two or more coupled systems that interact internally as well as nearby and far away, facilitated by agents affected by various causes with various effects. By differentiating and integrating intracoupling, pericoupling, and telecoupling, the metacoupling framework advances a systems perspective on global sustainability and human well-being. The framework can help uncover hidden systemic connections such as spillovers and feedbacks that may not be apparent when focusing on a particular system. To demonstrate the utility of the metacoupling framework, I illustrate its application to human-nature interactions within a global flagship nature reserve as well as between the reserve and the rest of the world. The illustration suggests that the framework has the potential to help holistically understand and integrate human-nature interactions from local to global scales, over time, and among organizational levels. Finally, I offer suggestions for operationalizing the metacoupling framework and discuss the need for new policy, governance, and management for a sustainable future across the metacoupled world.

ContextThe global trend of landscape simplification for industrial agriculture is known to cause losses in biodiversity and ecosystem service diversity. Despite these problems being widely known, status quo trajectories driven by global economic growth and changing diets continue to lead to further landscape simplification.ObjectivesIn this perspective article, we argue that landscape simplification has negative consequences for a range of relational values, affecting the social-ecological relationships between people and nature, as well as the social relationships among people. A focus on relational values has been proposed to overcome the divide between intrinsic and instrumental values that people gain from nature.ResultsWe use a landscape sustainability science framing to examine the interconnections between ecological and social changes taking place in rural landscapes. We propose that increasingly rapid and extreme landscape simplification erodes human-nature connectedness, social relations, and the sense of agency of inhabitants—potentially to the point of severe erosion of relational values in extreme cases. We illustrate these hypothesized changes through four case studies from across the globe. Leaving the links between ecological, social-ecological and social dimensions of landscape change unattended could exacerbate disconnection from nature.ConclusionA relational values perspective can shed new light on managing and restoring landscapes. Landscape sustainability science is ideally placed as an integrative space that can connect relevant insights from landscape ecology and work on relational values. We see local agency as a likely key ingredient to landscape sustainability that should be actively fostered in conservation and restoration projects.

Our relationship with nature adapts to our daily nature routines and it is rarely challenged. Forest bathing has been studied for its well-being benefits, but its potential as a novel nature-based activity to enrich human-nature relationships has not yet been examined. This multimethod study is based on 10 guided forest bathing sessions conducted in Sweden with 26 participants. Participants answered surveys before and after attending guided forest bathing sessions, and 16 of them were subsequently interviewed. Our results showed that these guided forest bathing sessions were mindful, restorative, and meaningful in deepening participants’ relationships with nature. With the guidance of session guides, participants engaged in novel interactions with nature, overcame challenges, and managed to identify, perceive, and treasure the value in them. Our findings underscore the importance of challenging conventional nature routines for enhancing well-being and sustainability.

The complex and interdisciplinary nature of socio-environmental (SE) problems has led to numerous efforts to develop organizing frameworks to capture the structural and functional elements of SE systems. We evaluate six leading SE frameworks, i.e., human ecosystem framework, resilience, integrated assessment of ecosystem services, vulnerability framework, coupled human-natural systems, and social-ecological systems framework, with the dual goals of (1) investigating the theoretical core of SE systems research emerging across diverse frameworks and (2) highlighting the gaps and research frontiers brought to the fore by a comparative evaluation. The discussion of the emergent theoretical core is centered on four shared structuring elements of SE systems: components, connections, scale, and context. Cross-cutting research frontiers include: moving beyond singular case studies and small-n studies to meta-analytic comparative work on outcomes in related SE systems; combining descriptive and data-driven modeling approaches to SE systems analysis; and promoting the evolution and refinement of frameworks through empirical application and testing, and interframework learning.

In recent years, environmental values have become increasingly important for understanding human–environment relationships and transitions towards sustainability. Pluralistic valuation seeks to account for values associated with the diversity of human–nature relationships. Relational values (RV) have been proposed as a concept that can aid in plural valuation. RV concern the relationships that people have with their environments. Most RV studies focus on ‘desirable’ or ‘beneficial’ RV that contribute to pro‐environmental actions and sustainable outcomes. We argue that RV could be expanded to understand values that may be less environmentally beneficial. We focus our analysis on RV that exist in ‘simplified’ landscapes. Drawing on our research on cattle‐based livelihoods in Latin America, we highlight potential approaches to the study of RV in such simplified landscapes. We then build on the examples to examine themes and principles of RV with the aim of stimulating discussion about how the concept might be refined and expanded to study a broader range of human–environment relationships. Overall, our aim is to contribute to plural valuation and offer preliminary suggestions for how RV might expand to capture the complexity of values, from those that are desirable to those which contribute to environmental degradation. Expanding the scope of RV research and the depth of the RV concept can help to understand the challenges to sustainability and contribute to the shared goals of sustainability that motivate values research. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Resumen En años recientes, los valores ambientales se han vuelto cada vez más importantes para comprender las relaciones entre el ser humano con el ambiente, y las transiciones hacia la sostenibilidad. La valoración plural busca dar cuenta de los valores asociados con la diversidad de relaciones humano‐naturaleza. Los Valores Relacionales (VR) se han propuesto como un concepto que puede ayudar en la valoración plural. Los VR se refieren a las relaciones que las personas tienen con su entorno. La mayoría de los estudios sobre VR se enfocan en aquellos valores ‘deseables’ o ‘beneficiosos’ que contribuyen a acciones proambientales y resultados sostenibles. Argumentamos que los VR podrían ampliarse para comprender los valores que pueden ser menos beneficiosos para el ambiente. Centramos nuestro análisis en los valores relacionales que existen en paisajes ‘simplificados’. Basándonos en nuestra investigación sobre los medios de vida ganaderos en América Latina, destacamos enfoques potenciales para el estudio de los VR en estos paisajes simplificados. Luego, desarrollamos los ejemplos de los medios de vida para examinar los temas y principios clave de VR con el objetivo de motivar la discusión sobre cómo el concepto podría refinarse y ampliarse para estudiar una gama mayor de relaciones entre los humanos y el ambiente. En general, nuestro objetivo es contribuir a la valoración plural y ofrecer sugerencias preliminares sobre cómo los VR podrían ampliarse para capturar la complejidad de los valores, desde aquellos que son deseables hasta aquellos que contribuyen a la degradación ambiental. Ampliar el alcance de la investigación sobre los VR y la profundidad del concepto puede ayudar a comprender los desafíos de la sostenibilidad y contribuir a los objetivos compartidos de sostenibilidad que motivan la investigación en valores. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Urban green spaces (UGS) provide mechanisms through which people connect and interact with each other, strengthening social relationships as well as human‐nature connections, both of high relevance for sustainable development. However, what determines urban residents' engagement in activities for the protection of UGS still lacks a systematic understanding. Our study aims to address this gap by enriching the value‐belief‐norm (VBN) theory with relational values based on a questionnaire (N = 221) among residents engaging in UGS maintenance in the city of Munich (Germany). Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling showed that both individual responsibility and societal responsibility guide urban residents in their actions towards UGS protection. Furthermore, we found a direct impact of biospheric, altruistic and hedonic values on engagement for the protection of UGS. Therefore, this study signals the importance of investing in actively promoting pluralistic values among urban residents as cities today urgently need a reconnection of the human‐nature relationship and UGS stewardship actions. As we further confirm that relational values have impact on the constructs of the VBN theory, we conclude with a plea for recognizing the potential of relational values as enablers of change towards more responsible behaviours towards urban nature. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Zusammenfassung Urbane Grünflächen (UGS) bieten Möglichkeiten des sozialen Austausches zwischen Menschen, wodurch die Beziehungen zwischen ihnen als auch zwischen Mensch und Natur gestärkt werden. Beide Beziehungen sind von großer Bedeutung für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung, aber bisher fehlen noch systematische Kenntnisse, was das Engagement der Stadtbewohn. Um diese Lücke zu schließen, wurde in unserer Studie eine Befragung (N = 221) von Bewohnern durchgeführt, die sich in München (Deutschland) für den Schutz von UGS engagieren. Die Studie beruht auf der Value‐Belief‐Norm (VBN)‐Theorie, die mit relationalen Werten erweitert wurde. Eine explorative Faktorenanalyse und ein Strukturgleichungsmodell zeigten, dass sowohl die individuelle Verantwortung als auch die gesellschaftliche Verantwortung die Stadtbewohner in ihrem Handeln zum Schutz von UGS leiten. Darüber hinaus beeinflussen biosphärische, altruistische und hedonistische Werte das Engagement für den Schutz von UGS. Die Studie zeigt, wie wichtig es ist, die unterschiedlichen Werthaltungen der Stadtbewohner gegenüber der Stadtnatur für den dringend erforderlichen Schutz der städtischen Grünflächen zu fördern. Das Potenzial relationaler Werte als Wegbereiter für ein verantwortungsvolleres Verhalten gegenüber der städtischen Natur sollte dazu verstärkt Berücksichtigung finden. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

In the history of the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment and its recognition, 2021 marked a milestone. To admit a new generation of human rights, in the UN, the Human Rights Council dealt with the matter of human rights and the environment. Considering the resolution 48/13, it can make the progressive legal accepts stronger at international level. Within the Council of Europe framework, an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the right to a healthy environment was drafted to admit a new generation of human rights, which is an integral part of Recommendation 2211 (2021). Furthermore also in 2021, the European Commission prepared a Proposal for a Directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law and replacing Directive 2008/99/EC. The drafted Directive is a part of the EU new legislative initiatives.