Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

This is a half-day qualitative workshop designed for medical practitioners of Paediatrics Palliative Care Unit of USM Kubang Krian. Topics covered in the workshop include stages of qualitative research, data collection techniques, data analysis and report writing.

Qualitative research design

This review examines different ways that contact with nature can contribute to the health and well-being of children. Applying the capabilities approach to human development for a broad definition ...

Benefits of Nature Contact for Children

List of Figures List of Tables Preface Introduction 1. A Movement or a Market? 2. Coffee, Commodities, Crisis 3. One Region, Two Markets 4. The Difference a Market Makes: Livelihoods and Labor 5. A Sustainable Cup? Fair Trade, Shade-Grown Coffee, and Organic Production 6. Eating and Staying on the Land: Food Security and Migration 7. Dancing with the Devil? 8. Mejor, Pero No Muy Bien Que Digamos": The Limits of Fair Trade 9. Strengthening Fair Trade Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix: Research Methods Notes Bibliography Index

Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival (Updated Edition)

Physical settings can play a role in coping with stress; in particular experimental research has found strong evidence between exposure to natural environments and recovery from physiological stress and mental fatigue, giving support to both Stress Recovery Theory and Attention Restoration Theory. In fact, exposure to natural environments protects people against the impact of environmental stressors and offer physiological, emotional and attention restoration more so than urban environments. Natural places that allow the renewal of personal adaptive resources to meet the demands of everyday life are called restorative environments. Natural environments elicit greater calming responses than urban environments, and in relation to their vision there is a general reduction of physiological symptoms of stress. Exposure to natural scenes mediates the negative effects of stress reducing the negative mood state and above all enhancing positive emotions. Moreover, one can recover the decrease of cognitive performance associated with stress, especially reflected in attention tasks, through the salutary effect of viewing nature. Giving the many benefits of contact with nature, plans for urban environments should attend to restorativeness.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/4/4/394/pdf

The role of nature in coping with psycho-physiological stress: a literature review on restorativeness.

Although environmental inequality researchers have increased our understanding of race- and class-based environmental inequality in many important ways, few environmental inequality studies ask whether children are disproportionately burdened by environmental pollution or whether poor and minority youth are less likely than their White and wealthier counterparts to spend time in green spaces and the natural world This gap in the literature undermines the ability of researchers to fully understand and explain environmental inequality To demonstrate the importance of filling this gap, the authors (a) highlight current research findings from the environmental health, environmental education, and environmental psychology literatures regarding the cognitive, emotional, and physical importance of childhood exposure to nature and (b) summarize the few existing studies that have examined class- and race-based inequalities in children's exposure to the natural world and industrial environmental hazards The authors then suggest several avenues of research that would, if undertaken, significantly increase our understanding of youth-based environmental inequality By synthesizing findings across multiple disciplines, the authors hope to convince environmental inequality researchers of the importance of investigating children's differential exposure to nature, green spaces, and industrial environmental hazards

/pdf/childhood-development-and-access-to-nature-a-new-direction-3vzmwpo7xv.pdf

Childhood Development and Access to Nature: A New Direction for Environmental Inequality Research

While numerous quantitative studies across disciplines have investigated children's knowledge and attitudes about environmental problems, few studies examine children's feelings about environmental problems—and even fewer have focused on the child's point of view. Through 50 in-depth interviews with urban children (ages 10–12) this research aimed to fill the scholarly gap in our understanding of children's environmental concerns by voicing children's feelings about environmental problems. Findings revealed 82% of children expressed fear, sadness, and anger when discussing their feelings about environmental problems. A majority of children also shared apocalyptic and pessimistic feelings about the future state of the planet. These results suggest that many children are “ecophobic” (i.e., fearful of environmental problems), which scholars argue may have serious implications for children's participation in environmental stewardship and conservation efforts more broadly. Understanding children's perspectives ...

Children's Environmental Concerns: Expressing Ecophobia

This article sets forth a new theoretical model that holds that local, regional, and global environmental crises are to a significant degree the product of organizational, institutional, and networ...

Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment

Recently the environmental movement has seen much success and progress under a newly-framed green paradigm. Yet, despite the proliferation of national attention to, and public interest in, the go-green mentality, environmental education still seems to be stuck within the old environmental paradigm. This critical essay shares lessons that environmental education can learn through incorporating a human benefits approach. Ultimately, this essay calls for a reflection on environmental education's presence within the budding sustainability movement and calls for the “humanization” of environmental education discourse and pedagogical practice.

Reflecting on Environmental Education: Where Is Our Place in the Green Movement?

It is well known that children are disproportionately vulnerable to the negative physical and mental impacts of environmental pollutants; however few studies have illuminated the environmental concerns of children who are growing up in an environmental justice context. Through 20 child-drawn maps and semi-structured interviews, this qualitative research aimed to voice the environmental concerns and awareness of minority and socio-economically disadvantaged children (ages ten to twelve) living within an urban environmental justice setting. The informants expressed a multitude of concerns about their neighborhood environment, especially revolving around violent strangers and gang activity. Children also shared fear, sadness, and disgust regarding proximate pollution, revealing a common theme of anxiety about the current state of the natural environment. These findings shed light on how growing up in environmentally degraded conditions impact children's awareness of environmental problems and add to the scho...

Susan Strife

Papers

Childhood Development and Access to Nature: A New Direction for Environmental Inequality Research

Children's Environmental Concerns: Expressing Ecophobia

Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment

Reflecting on Environmental Education: Where Is Our Place in the Green Movement?

Growing up in an Environmental Justice Context: Children's Environmental Concerns