man and nature essay

The Beauty About The Nature

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

The Stars Awaken a Certain Reverence, Because Though Always Present, They Are Inaccessible;

but all natural objects make a kindred impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet . The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet . This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this, their warranty deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other;

who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.

Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,

— no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.

I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

Chapter I from Nature , published as part of Nature; Addresses and Lectures

What Is The Meaning Behind Nature, The Poem?

Emerson often referred to nature as the "Universal Being" in his many lectures. It was Emerson who deeply believed there was a spiritual sense of the natural world which felt was all around him.

Going deeper still in this discussion of the "Universal Being", Emerson writes, "The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship."

It's common sense that "nature" is everything you see that is NOT man-made, or changed by man (trees, foliage, mountains, etc.), but Emerson reminds us that nature was set forth to serve man. This is the essence of human will, for man to harness nature. Every object in nature has its own beauty. Therefore, Emerson advocates to view nature as a reality by building your own world and surrounding yourself with natural beauty.

• The purpose of science is to find the theory of nature.
• Nature wears the colors of the Spirit.
• A man is fed, not to fill his belly, but so he may work.
• Each natural action is graceful.

"Material objects are necessarily kinds of scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side."

This quote is cited in numerous works and it is attributed to a "French philosopher." However, no name can be found in association with this quote.

What is the main point of Nature, by Emerson?

The central theme of Emerson's famous essay "Nature" is the harmony that exists between the natural world and human beings. In "Nature," Ralph Waldo Emerson contends that man should rid himself of material cares and instead of being burdened by unneeded stress, he can enjoy an original relation with the universe and experience what Emerson calls "the sublime."

What is the central idea of the essay Nature, by Emerson?

For Emerson, nature is not literally God but the body of God’s soul. ”Nature,” he writes, is “mind precipitated.” Emerson feels that to realize one’s role in this respect fully is to be in paradise (similar to heaven itself).

What is Emerson's view of the Nature of humans?

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Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

Students are often asked to write an essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

The bond with nature.

People and nature are interconnected. We rely on the environment for survival, using its resources for food, shelter, and air. Nature, in return, benefits from our care and protection.

Respecting Nature

Respecting nature is essential. By protecting the environment, we ensure our own survival. We must recycle, reduce waste, and conserve energy to maintain this balance.

The Consequences of Neglect

Ignoring nature’s needs leads to problems like climate change and species extinction. These issues affect us directly, threatening our health and lifestyle.

Our relationship with nature is a delicate balance. By respecting and caring for the environment, we ensure a healthier, brighter future for all.

250 Words Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

The intrinsic connection.

The relationship between humans and nature is an intricate, symbiotic bond, profoundly shaped by millions of years of evolution. Humans, as sentient beings, have developed sophisticated cultures and technologies, yet our survival remains inextricably tied to the natural world.

Dependence and Impact

Nature provides essential resources such as air, water, food, and raw materials. These resources are not only crucial for our survival, but they also form the basis of our economic systems. However, our reliance on nature has led to significant environmental impacts. Deforestation, pollution, and climate change are direct consequences of human activities, threatening biodiversity and the stability of ecosystems.

The Reciprocal Relationship

The human-nature relationship is reciprocal. While we shape nature through our actions, nature, in turn, influences human behavior, culture, and mental health. Exposure to natural environments has been linked to reduced stress levels, improved mood, and enhanced cognitive function.

A Need for Rebalance

The current environmental crisis calls for a rebalance in the human-nature relationship. It necessitates a shift from exploitation to sustainable coexistence, where we respect and preserve nature’s intrinsic value. This shift requires a deeper understanding of our interconnectedness with nature and a collective effort to reduce our environmental impact.

In conclusion, the human-nature relationship is a complex and dynamic interaction that has significant implications for both parties. As we move forward, it is essential to foster a relationship of mutual respect and sustainability with nature to ensure the survival and wellbeing of all life on Earth.

500 Words Essay on Relationship Between Human And Nature

The intricate dance: human and nature.

The relationship between humans and nature is a complex interplay of dependence, respect, exploitation, and evolution. This relationship is not just crucial for our survival, but it also shapes our culture, beliefs, and our very identity.

Dependence: The Lifeline

The most fundamental aspect of our relationship with nature is our dependence on it. We rely on nature for our basic necessities – air, water, food, and shelter. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the materials we use for shelter all come from nature. This dependence is not a one-way street. Nature, in turn, relies on us to maintain its balance. Our actions, whether they involve planting trees or emitting carbon dioxide, have a direct impact on the natural world.

Respect: The Forgotten Virtue

Historically, humans have revered nature. Many ancient cultures worshipped nature deities and respected the land, the sea, and the sky. This respect was born out of an understanding of our dependence on nature, and the need to maintain a harmonious relationship with it. However, with the advent of industrialization and modernization, this respect has often been forgotten. We have begun to see nature as a resource to be exploited, rather than a partner to be respected.

Exploitation: The Double-Edged Sword

Our exploitation of nature has led to unprecedented advancements in technology, medicine, and living standards. However, it has also led to environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and a host of other problems. Our exploitation of nature has become a double-edged sword, providing us with short-term gains but threatening our long-term survival.

Evolution: The Path Forward

The future of our relationship with nature lies in evolution. We must evolve our attitudes and behaviors towards nature. We must move away from a paradigm of exploitation and towards one of sustainability. This involves not just technological innovation, but also a shift in our values and beliefs. We must learn to value nature not just for what it can provide us, but for its intrinsic worth.

Conclusion: Redefining the Relationship

The relationship between humans and nature is at a crossroads. We can continue down the path of exploitation and face the consequences, or we can choose a new path of respect, sustainability, and coexistence. The choice is ours to make. As we stand at this juncture, let us remember that our relationship with nature is not just about survival, but also about who we are as a species. It is about our values, our beliefs, and our legacy. It is about our future.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Love for Nature
• Essay on Human Destroying Nature
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November 10, 2014

Can Humans and Nature Coexist?

Conservationists go to war over whether humans are the measure of nature's value

By Gayathri Vaidyanathan & ClimateWire

Students in classrooms with windows that open out to nature in all its glory may perform better on tests.

This is not fully established science, but Heather Tallis, an ecologist at the Nature Conservancy, is testing the idea in California and other states. She is using satellite data to image the sweeping California landscapes—mountains to deserts to inner cities—in the backyards of randomly chosen schools. And she is correlating the presence of nature to standardized test results. Her hypothesis, which may be disproved, is that students do well when they are surrounded by nature.

The study would be of great interest to parents, of course. And it also highlights a key debate raging through the conservation community: Does nature (biodiversity) have value even when it does not contribute to human well-being? If Tallis finds that seeing nature from school rooms does not help students, is nature still worth having around the school for its own sake?

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The question is important in the era of global warming, which scientists say has already caused many species to shift their ranges and migration patterns. For instance, it could mean extinction for the pied flycatcher, a tiny black-and-white bird found in Europe. It has  declined  by 90 percent in the Netherlands because spring is coming earlier each year and the flycatcher chicks are missing the peak season of their basic food: caterpillars. Climate change could eliminate a quarter of all species if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

A new breed of scientists do not see value in preserving all such threatened species. Last week, some of these "New Conservationists" presented their philosophy at a Washington, D.C., think tank. They spoke of a future where nature and humans co-prosper, aiding things that would enrage traditional eco-activists: desalination, industrialized agriculture, nuclear power. The fixes would allow humans to prosper in cities using fewer natural resources. Our civilizations would, in effect, be "decoupled" from nature, and the wilds would creep back into abandoned countrysides.

"Decoupling will be the biggest driver that will determine how much nature we leave to nonhumans over the next century," said Ted Nordhaus, chairman of the Breakthrough Institute.

The New Conservation stance has enraged dozens of conservation biologists, who view all nonhuman life as sacred, extinction as a "great moral wrong" and species as best protected by curtailing human growth. Their anger has been voiced in ecology journals, on the sidelines of conferences, in classrooms and even in the Kenyan wilderness. The debate has had widespread implications, with funding organizations hesitant to support conservation projects and students reluctant to enter the field for the wrong reasons.

The fallout led Tallis; Jane Lubchenco, an ecologist at Oregon State University and former administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and 238 other scientists to call for a truce this week in a commentary  in the journal  Nature .

"Unfortunately, what began as a healthy debate has, in our opinion, descended into vitriolic, personal battles in universities, academic conferences, research stations, conservation organizations and even the media," the scientists wrote.

Bumping heads over the bumphead parrotfish A case study in the middle of this fight involves the bumphead parrotfish.

A squat reef-dweller with a cartoonish bump reminiscent of a permanent head wound, the parrotfish is found off the Palmyra Atoll south of Hawaii and other places. The species is threatened, but scientists have found that, if allowed to increase in numbers unchecked (sharks that feed on the parrotfish have been overfished by humans), it would harm coral reefs, habitats for fish on which people depend for food and livelihoods.

The coral ecosystem is of great value to humans; but is the parrotfish? The biologist Michael Soulé, who established the tenets of conservation biology in 1985, would say it is. In a landmark  article  that year, he declared a conservation philosophy that biodiversity is good, the extinction of organisms is bad, and nature has intrinsic value beyond what it can afford humans.

Conservationists following in Soulé's footsteps have focused on leaving nature pristine within protected areas such as Yellowstone National Park, where, theoretically far from human interference, biodiversity could flourish. But despite 6.2 million square miles under protection today, species loss has accelerated, particularly in the tropics. Meanwhile, the human footprint has grown, and humans now use half the planet's ice-free land. The rest remains unused simply because it is unusable.

Since 2011, Soulé's tenets have been vociferously challenged by New Conservationists led by Peter Kareiva, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy ( Greenwire , April 3, 2012). Kareiva argued that declaring "good" and "bad" values does not help nature and conservation must instead focus on "practical statements on what conservation should do in order to succeed."

"Only by seeking to jointly maximize conservation and economic objectives is conservation likely to succeed," Kareiva  wrote . He christened this focus conservation  science  rather than conservation biology.

It could involve managing ecosystems directly important for human welfare and paying local people to protect them. And it could preserve altered ecosystems where some species are incredibly important, such as coral reefs. Others, such as the bumphead parrotfish, would be left to oblivion.

Kareiva's article provoked a firestorm led by Soulé, who has called New Conservation's inclusion of human welfare and acceptance of some extinctions a "great moral wrong."

The road to 're-wilding' New Conservationists argue such trade-offs are necessary in this human-dominated epoch. And they support "re-wilding," a concept originally proposed by Soulé where people curtail economic growth and withdraw from landscapes, which then return to nature.

New Conservationists believe the withdrawal could happen together with economic growth. The California-based Breakthrough Institute believes in a future where most people live in cities and rely less on natural resources for economic growth.

They would get food from industrial agriculture, including genetically modified foods, desalination, intensified meat production and aquaculture, all of which have a smaller land footprint. And they would get their energy from renewables and natural gas.

Driving these profound shifts would be greater efficiency of production, where more products could be manufactured from fewer inputs. And some unsustainable commodities would be replaced in the market by other, greener ones—natural gas for coal, for instance, explained Michael Shellenberger, president of the Breakthrough Institute. Nature would, in essence, be decoupled from the economy.

And then he added a caveat: "We are not suggesting decoupling as the paradigm to save the world, or that it solves all the problems or eliminates all the trade-offs."

Cynics may say all this sounds too utopian, but Breakthrough maintains the world is already on this path toward decoupling. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States, according to Iddo Wernick, a research scholar at the Rockefeller University, who has examined the nation's use of 100 main commodities.

Wernick and his colleagues pored over data from the U.S. Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center, which keeps a record of commodities used from 1900 through the present day. They found that the use of 36 commodities (sand, ire ore, cotton, etc.) in the U.S. economy had peaked.

Another 53 commodities (nitrogen, timber, beef, etc.) are being used more efficiently per dollar value of gross domestic product than in the pre-1970s era. Their use would peak soon, Wernick said.

Only 11 commodities (industrial diamond, indium, chicken, etc.) are increasing in use ( Greenwire , Nov. 6), and most of these are employed by industries in small quantities to improve systems processes. Chicken use is rising because people are eating less beef, a desirable development since poultry cultivation has a smaller environmental footprint.

The numbers show the United States has not intensified resource consumption since the 1970s even while increasing its GDP and population, said Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University.

"It seems like the 20th-century expectation we had, we were always assuming the future entailed greater consumption of resources," Ausubel said. "But what we are seeing in the developed countries is, of course, peaks."

The developing economies of China and India would follow in two to three decades, Ausubel said.

Calls for a truce Wernick and Ausubel's report challenges the traditional belief that economic growth hinges on unchecked natural resource consumption. It provides hope that human prosperity could coexist with conservation goals.

Traditional conservation biologists would not fully agree with this statement. While human welfare is important, nature too has its intrinsic value and ought to be protected, they argue. For instance, in the case of the coral reef ecosystem, biologists would support cutting greenhouse gas emissions from factories because that leads to climate change, which in turn harms corals.

The back-and-forth has left many other conservationists deeply shaken and some funding organizations apprehensive about supporting conservation initiatives. Tallis of the Nature Conservancy said students have expressed concerns over joining a fractious field.

"I've been literally in the bush in Kenya and heard a few people debating really aggressively about this issue in the middle of the bush," she said.

So, in a commentary, Tallis and 239 conservationists called for scientists from the two opposing camps to make nice and accept that all conservation approaches could coexist in different contexts.

Why an individual should care about nature is a very value-laden issue, Tallis said. It is not necessary to chose one set of values over others, she said.

"We call for an end to the fighting," Tallis and her co-authors wrote. "We call for a conservation ethic that is diverse in its acceptance of genders, cultures, ages and values."

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net , 202-628-6500

An Essay on Man and Nature Connection

• Post author: Davidokul
• Post published: May 20, 2020
• Post category: Essay / Natural Resources management

Over the previous decades, research has been focused on understanding the relationship between man and nature. While pundits may argue about this relationship, there is substantive evidence demonstrating an intricate relationship between humans and nature. We depend on nature for basic needs, economic growth, and health. 

Man lives in the sphere of nature. 

As humans, nature always surrounds us.  We interact with it now and then. The biosphere is the most crucial part of nature regarding the man-nature relationship. It includes the thin layer surrounding the earth, the soil cover, and any living creature.  Without nature, human beings can’t live normal lives. In other words, man needs nature more than nature needs him. Nature can exist without man, but humans can’t exist without nature.

Man has a massive influence on nature

Humans aren’t just mere dwellers in the sphere of nature. They also transform nature.  Since man’s existence, he has adapted nature and further made all sorts of incursions into nature. Man has spent enormous energy and time changing nature.  The observation explains that man has consistently transformed nature’s wealth into the present-day means of the historical and cultural life of modern society.  For instance, man has exploited nature to generate electricity and then utilizes the electrical power to serve his interest and his community.  Man hasn’t just transferred a variety of animal and plant species to various climatic conditions, but he has further altered the climate of his habitat.

Man and nature connection is strong.

While man’s connection to nature has been severely weakened by man’s dependence on nature for domestic and industrial resources over the years, man still has a strong connection to nature.  After all, man’s psychological and physical need for nature remains intact. As far as nature will continue being man’s source of physical and psychological well-being, humans will remain deeply connected to nature. That explains the deep and strong relationship between nature and man.

Nature and man interact dialectically.

The interaction between nature and man is such that, the more the society progresses, the more man relies less on nature. Think about it; we rely on natural resources for the sustenance of cities and the development of technologies. The components of your phone are mainly derived from the minerals-a natural resource! Again, as man continues to discover more about nature, the more he strives to transform it. Man’s influence on nature increases progressively. Nevertheless, man continues to come into more contact with nature as time progresses.

There are specific stages of man-nature relationship.

The relationship between nature and man has various stages. The first stage is whereby man depends entirely on nature.  Since time immemorial, man has thrived regardless of the enormity of natural formations. He has always been awake to nature’s destructive and menacing forces. The second stage of the man-nature relationship is whereby nature changes its face in the course of its interaction with man. The third stage is whereby man is concerned with preserving nature for the sake of his needs.

The man-nature connection has led to unforeseen paradoxes

One of the unforeseen paradoxes that have been brought about by the man-nature relationship is the infamous paradox of saturation. Since the existence of man on the planet millions of years ago, the effects of humans’ power over nature were insignificant.  With time, man’s over-exploitation led to the destruction of nearly all aspects of nature. A key example of the prolonged over-exploitation of nature by humans is pollution.  Over the years, pollution has led to the destruction of key aspects of nature such as water and the atmosphere. Currently , plastic pollution is an environmental menace that is challenging for our generation. 

The man-nature relationship has been characterized by overuse and imbalance.

Almost every part of man’s history has been marked with nature exploitation, specifically environmental degradation.  Initially, humans were incredibly in-tune with their surroundings. The ancient people had an insignificant effect on nature, due to their meager population size. But as the human population continued to soar, coupled with technological advancements, man started using more efficient methods of sustaining himself. As populations grew, and societies evolved, the demand for resources shot drastically. This trend led to man distancing himself from nature. He was no longer in-tune with nature. This led to an imbalance and over-use of nature.

The industrialization has alienated man from nature

Whereas no one would deny that man has depended entirely on nature for virtually all his needs, industrialization has taken a toll on nature.  With the rise of industrialization, man is gradually being alienated from nature.  But due to man’s understanding that he is completely dependent on nature, there have been concerted attempts in the world over to redeem man’s connection to nature. It is no wonder that concepts such as Environmental Impact Assessments are becoming more relevant.

Nature always fights back, and wins

Generally, humans have an insatiable appetite for exploiting nature. We tend to overuse the natural resources by our excessive consumption. There are many ways in which nature has fought. Two of the ways are highlighted below:

• Climate change: Our overuse of fossil fuels is leading to climate change that is having devastating impacts on our lives. The effects of climate change range from sea level rise to adverse weather conditions
• Disease outbreaks: As humans destroy and come in close contact with natural habitats, we are further exposed to the numerous pathogens. It is suspected that the corona virus is a zoonotic disease . The more we encroach into natural habitats, the more we will expose ourselves to diseases

Man is a vital part of nature

Man defines nature as much as he is fully dependent on it. Historically, man has a considerable influence on nature. Through his actions, whether unconscious or conscious, man determines which course nature will take.  In other words, man determines the pace that nature will take to evolve. As such, nature and man are inseparable. Man depends on nature for all resources he requires in life. He, therefore, should remain in-tune with nature since he is an integral part of it.

The man-nature connection is sometimes ‘unclear’

The connection between man and nature is, at times, ambiguous, as much as it is intricate. For instance, nature can be an enemy to man as much as it remains a provider. Think about environmental disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, and floods. On the other hand, man is the main beneficiary as far as the relationship is concerned. Since time immemorial, man has always strived to dominate nature. Nevertheless, this domination is currently being revised by societies in the world over. For instance, we are learning that dominating nature is difficult, as exemplified by the complexities of climate change.

The man-nature relationship has had its ups and downs since time immemorial. Although the connection is intricate, multiple instances prove that the present-day man isn’t in-tune with nature. As such, humans must consider their relationship with nature, considering that they need nature more than nature needs them. There should be a universal awareness of how humans can best use nature without exploiting it so that the man-nature connection can continue to thrive.

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Essay On Relationship Between Human And Nature

The sample essay on Essay On Relationship Between Human And Nature deals with a framework of research-based facts, approaches and arguments concerning this theme. To see the essay’s introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion, read on.

Humans are gradually becoming more aware of the need to move towards a sustainable future with nature. Our well beings and extravagant lifestyles largely depend on the resources provided to us by the environment and without them, we won’t be able to survive for long.

In order to move towards sustainability, we, humans, need to create a symbiosis relationship, one where we both give and take from nature, rather than persisting with the parasitic relationship we have right now, where we take without giving anything back. So what Is sustainability?

The fact Is, there Is no simple definition of the term ‘sustainability’; the term changes slightly with each definition depending on the perspective It Is written from as well as the values and beliefs held by the writer.

The general Idea most people have of sustainability Involves living with the surrounding environment In a way that will allow both the system and the environment to continue surviving comfortably (Bender, 2013). Another popular deflation of sustainability Is the capacity or ability of something to maintain Itself (” what Is sustalnabllltV2008).

Both these definitions re different in that one has an anthracic nature and is more specific, while the other could be applied to any living thing; however, it should be noted they both revolve around the maintenance of oneself, though Helen Bender’s definition also involves the maintenance of one’s surrounding as the quality of humankind’s future is dependent on it.

Proficient in: Environmental Science

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The reality is, humans need nature in order to survive which explains the urgency to establish a sustainable relationship with nature.

Nature Relationship

Everything we have originates from nature which has finite resources and as history shows, without these resources, our violation, like the Easter Island, will most likely collapse. The Easter Island is arguably an epitome of the impacts of the overexploitation of resources. It is said that the fall of the Easter Island civilization is largely the result of the destruction to their environment; as wood was not a part of their currency, the motivation to conserve the non-renewable resource did not exist, and as such the deforestation of the island occurred (Diamond, 2003).

Though other factors did contribute to the collapse of the civilization, such as the overpopulation of rats (Hunt,2006) and their isolation from there islands, the strapping of the island started the domino effect that effectively ended the civilization. On the other hand, communities like the Aboriginals that lived as part of the environment were able to thrive and survive for countless years (approximately 50,000 years (“Australian Aboriginals History Timeline” 2013)).

The deep reverence they held for nature along with the practices they exercised allowed them to live with nature In a way that allowed both parties to benefit from the relationship. For instance, burning practices, where certain areas were purposely set n fire In order to promote the growth of certain species of plants and other organisms, such as tubular flowers, occurred once every few years. This traditional not only exterminated unwanted shrubs and weeds, It also promoted grasslands that provided native species, such as kangaroos, with food (World, 2012).

These are but two examples of how essential nature is to a civilization and how ones relationship we have today originates from nature and without it, we would not have food, oil, houses, cars and everything we believe to be vital to our daily lives. In order to preserve our current lifestyle and the lifestyles of the future generations, we need to be able to learn to incorporate nature into our lives, but before any action is to be taken, we need to first learn to respect nature.

Hundreds of definitions exist for the term “nature”. A definition of nature is anything, organic or inorganic, that was not created or altered by human activity (Low et al, 2005). Though this definition is not wrong, it does not cover the extent of alteration something natural can undergo before it is considered to be unnatural. For example, a bush in someone’s back yard as been removed from its original location and is occasionally trimmed and fertilized, and yet, most people would still consider it to be a part of nature.

A better definition of nature would be anything, organic or inorganic, that was not created or altered to a point where it is unrecognizable from its original resource by human activity. Respecting nature, in by no way, means that we should stop going out into the wilderness, nor does it mean that we should live in mud huts and become vegans. Think of a person you respect and the way you treat them because of it. Do you avoid them? Do you take advantage of them? No.

Though you may regard them with high esteem, you probably would not go out of you way to avoid them, in fact, you would probably try to include them in your life, so why can’t we do the same with nature? An ideal way of incorporating nature into our lives is to move towards the construction of green cities’. This could mean more parks, the encouragement of growing plants on apartments and office buildings, and the use of a sustainable energy source such as solar energy.

This not only takes us a step closer Tao sustainable future, it also has psychological benefits such as relaxation and stress lease (Davis, 2004). Though people are starting to see the advantages of building ‘green cities’, various factors have to be considered; aesthetic factors as well as the economic cost are among the most important elements which have to be regarded. In order to build a ‘green city’ that will have an impact on the planet, we need the majority of the city’s citizens to be behind the movement, and to do so, the additions to the area have to be pleasing to the eye (no one wants an ugly view).

In addition, the price of the changes and well as future maintenance have to be affordable to the argue part of the population because, as one can imagine, if only 2% of the city can afford to make the change, then there will not be a significant impact. Another factor that would impact the decisions of the citizens would be their degree of respect. Without respect for nature, we will not change. Australians dispose approximately eight billion dollars worth of food each year (“Do Australians waste $8 billion worth of edible food each year? , 2013); we act as if we own the environment, when, in reality, the survival of humankind depends on it and the fact is, nature’s resources are finite ND can only last for so long, especially if we persist with our current habits. If we are to change, we need to realize this fact and start showing our respect though the protection and maintenance of nature because as of now, the planet would be better off without us. Human impact, and a large number of them are negative impacts.

Take Coherency as an example. In 1986, an explosion at a nuclear power plant in Coherency released large quantities of radioactive particles into the air which spread to western USSR and parts of Europe. This incident not only effected humans, but also the environment around the area. The damage to these areas severely effected the ecological system, the radioactive particles no only killed and altered the plants, it also effected the ground water and cause mutations to various animals (Fallacy, 2013).

Incidents like this happened several times throughout history (Hiroshima and Opal to name a few), which brings up the question: would this planet be better off without the existence of humans? Though it is true that we, humans, have cause uncountable damages to this planet, it is also true that we have ingrained ourselves onto the Earth in a way that will cause further destruction if we were to one day disappear. Buildings and other infrastructure require the maintenance of humans in order to stay standing.

The things we see as ‘permanent’ are not really so and without us, they would eventually collapse. It is true that, in the (very)long term, nature will triumph, but not before taking heavy damage. Dams will start to wear down and eventually break causing floods, and nuclear power plants will start to leak (Varies, 2008). Furthermore, certain species that rely on humans to survive, such as jugs, could go extinct as they are not adapted to survive in the wild (Varies, 2008).

A large flaw In our species (humankind) is that the majority of us do not learn from the past and so we make the same mistake over and over again, mistakes that the planet, as well as ourselves, have to take the consequence for. For instance, though we know that the fall of the Easter Islanders was largely due to their mistreatment of the environment, we are still making the same mistake today as they did then; we use resources like its infinite and are not able to foresee the consequences of our action.

Maybe its due to our selfishness, or maybe its Just ignorance, but the outcomes of out actions will impact the future generations as well as nature itself. It is crucial to establish a relationship with nature that is beneficial to both parties and only then, will we be able to call ourselves a sustainable species. Nature provides us with everything we have and need in order to survive, so without it, humankind will not last long. It is because of the substantial amount of damages that the planet has taken from us humans, that the need to take action is urgent.

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Article Contents

‘living in harmony with nature’ vs. ‘unity of nature and man’, 2050 vision: unity of nature and man (unm), keys for the pathway towards unm vision, acknowledgements.

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Unity of Nature and Man: a new vision and conceptual framework for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

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Tianxiao Ma, Yisi Hu, Meng Wang, Lijun Yu, Fuwen Wei, Unity of Nature and Man: a new vision and conceptual framework for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, National Science Review , Volume 8, Issue 7, July 2021, nwaa265, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwaa265

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People live in nature. However, substantial evidence confirms that, under the pressure of anthropogenic alteration, nature is being fragmented, imperiled and becoming less able to provide essential services [ 1 ]. Biodiversity loss is the most significant signal of this depletion, and could profoundly impact the future of human beings and the rest of life on Earth [ 2 ].

Against this background, Parties of Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed a 2011–2020 Strategic Plan and 20 Aichi Targets to halt continuing biodiversity loss. However, according to the latest global assessment report released by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2019, biodiversity is still declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history [ 3 ]. It is clear that the majority of the Aichi Targets will not be met by the 2020 deadline [ 4 ]. Even with a careful strategic plan developed and implemented under the authoritative CBD context, biodiversity and ecosystem services critical for humanity are declining and degrading fast. This has prompted reflections on the current strategic plan and the UN framework in general [ 3 , 4 ].

The 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of CBD will be held in China in 2021, during which the new strategic plan for the next decade of biodiversity conservation will be drafted. Various suggestions have been proposed by scientists and different stakeholders for contributing to this much-anticipated strategic plan. They are focused on meeting the 2050 Vision of ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’. Mace et al. [ 5 ]argued that targets should be developed in a well-defined, ambitious and measurable way to support the next CBD vision, and that three indicators are required to measure the progress in biodiversity recovery. Paired with the UN’s Paris Climate Agreement, ‘A global deal for nature’ ambitiously targets 30% of Earth to be formally protected and an additional 20% designated as climate stabilization areas by 2030, to preserve biodiversity and keep global warming below 1.5°C [ 6 ]. Locke et al. [ 7 ] proposed an enabling framework of three global conditions for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use that could support both approaches and achieve the 2050 Vision. These technical suggestions provide important ideas for development of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (post-2020 GBF). However, they do not question the vision or the basic conceptual framework of the current Strategic Plan of the CBD.

We argue that the current 2050 Vision will not be sufficient to drive transformative change. Further, we argue that human development cannot be divorced from biodiversity conservation and utilization. The basic understanding of the appropriate balance in the relationship between nature and humans is actually the crucial point. It is the starting point that lays the very foundation of any ambitious and effective strategic plan for biodiversity conservation.

With the human-centric perspective dominating for the past two centuries, nature and human are seen as two separate entities [ 8 ]. Nature is treated as being ‘outside’ of humans, and thus humans treat nature as an object to fear, conquer, pillage and rule. In this context, nature and man are regarded as opposing entities with contradictory demands. It is true that the two have different needs: nature's demands are to maintain its components, ecological processes and evolutionary potential, while man's demands are to sustain a growing population and improve quality of life relying on resources and services provided by nature. But the assumption underlying this separation of humanity and nature is that nature is a limitless storehouse for humans to enrich themselves as much as their creativity allows. Dominant anthropocentrism and dramatic technological development free humans to exploit nature, which has already exceeded a safe and just operating space for humanity [ 9 , 10 ]. Nature's demands have been neglected in this process, which in turn undermined man's basic needs, including demands under the Sustainable Development Goals for clean air and water, via interactions across the coupled human-natural system [ 11 ]. In light of the great damage this thinking has caused to biodiversity and ecosystems, we can no longer assume that nature is an infinite resource to exploit. Nature and its ability to provide services keep being damaged, which we now know threatens the future development of humanity [ 3 ]. Consequently, a rethink of the relationship between nature and man, and also their demands, is essential for ensuring the appropriate course of biological diversity conservation and also humanity development for the coming decades.

The modern nature-human dichotomous perspective emphasizes the material substance of nature and its instrumental value relative to the contribution to humans [ 8 ]. However, within the context of some other knowledge systems, nature has its intrinsic value because of the existence of its components and also the broader aspect of concepts it covers, such as the cultural elements of ancestors, shared history and deities [ 12 ]. This intrinsic value is not necessarily related to the materials and services nature provides for man but, in turn, man is included as component just as other animals [ 13 ]. One extreme example is the traditional Chinese Taoism, in which nature is represented by Tien (Heaven and Earth), which is composed of human and non-human nature and even the ultimate rule of this universe. All these perspectives have a common ground – nature and man are as one.

Sharing this perspective, Taoism describes the relationship between nature and man as ‘Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten-thousand things are one with me’ (天地与我并生, 而万物与我为一) [ 14 ], which can be concisely summarized as a vision of ‘Unity of Nature and Man’ (‘天人合一’) (UNM). The Chinese sages’ UNM vision embraces inherent respect for nature and advocates that humanity development should conform to the rule of nature with a holistic view. Against the background of the current perspective of separation of nature and man and the resulting ecological crisis, this inspires us to recognize ourselves as, and behave as, a member of nature following the principle of UNM.

The current 2050 Vision uses the words ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’, the meaning of which in its original language is society in symbiosis with nature, both with mutual benefit and necessarily detrimental aspects for one of the parties [ 12 ]. However, Living in Harmony with Nature (LHN) as used by the CBD has four attributes which narrow its meaning. The Vision says: ‘By 2050, (b) biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, (c) maintaining ecosystem services, (d) sustaining a healthy planet and (e) delivering benefits essential for all people’.

This version of the meaning of LHN loses its original Taoist flavor. This can be seen in the words that imply nature's value to humans is necessary: nature is to be ‘valued, conserved, restored and wisely used’ as an object, not treated as an equal. There is no recognition that it has its own needs and its own evolutionary direction that must be respected in a relationship of mutuality as opposed to one of exploitation. While realizing this vision would certainly be an improvement over current conditions, it still does not create the indispensable right relationship of UNM on which future sustainability depends. In contrast, a vision based on the Taoist idea of ‘Unity of Nature and Man’ could achieve this.

As UNM implies, nature's intrinsic value is the existence of its components and broad non-material concepts covered. It advocates that man, as one component of nature, must arrange his activities following the rule that nature contains, and without damaging the sustainability of other components when meeting his own needs. For example, in classical Chinese philosophy, UNM proposed ‘树木以时伐焉 (Trees are logged by time), 禽兽以时杀焉 (Birds and beasts are hunted by time)’, telling people to use natural resources conforming to the life cycle of creatures to guarantee the sustainability of both provider and beneficiary. However, along with humanity's overexploitation of nature to accommodate increasing demands for material goods, the modern human-nature relationship has clearly deviated from the ideal state of UNM and led to the current environmental crisis. To halt the continuing decline of nature and revert to UNM, humanity development must be aligned with nature's limits and demands by respecting its existence, conforming to its rule and conserving its sustainability. UNM considers the demands of both nature and man at the same time by adopting a sustainable approach. In this way, nature and man are no longer two opposed individuals, nor are their demands, but are in complete harmony, blend and finally become one.

On 5 September 2019, the theme of CBD COP15 was finalized and announced as ‘Ecological Civilization - Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth’ [ 15 ]. This theme originates from the Chinese vision of ecological civilization. Ecological civilization is an eco-innovation rooted in traditional wisdom of UNM to harmonize the apparent contradiction between economic development and environmental protection [ 16 ]. COP15 is considered to be a ‘unique and historical opportunity’ to reconcile the relationship between humanity and nature [ 15 ]. UNM, as the real connotation of COP15 theme, could enable this renewed understanding, promote the establishment of ‘a global society in which economic, social, cultural and environmental concerns are addressed in a truly holistic way’ [ 15 ] and foster a sustainable future shared by all life on Earth.

To summarize the above implications of UNM, we propose a more holistic 2050 Vision of ‘Unity of Nature and Man whereby all of Nature is respected, its rule is conformed to, and its components are adequately protected and Humanity meets its own unique needs through sustainable production and sustainable consumption on land and ocean, therefore the sustainability of both nature and man are guaranteed and united.’ This UNM Vision can direct and motivate more comprehensive and effective actions for conserving biodiversity and meeting human's demands at the same time to ensure the effective outcome of the CBD’s three main objectives.

Using the Chinese Taoist philosophy, we propose a new conceptual framework to illustrate the vision of ‘Unity of Nature and Man’ and relate it to implementation. A tetrahedron framework shows the three main skeletons, represented by ‘Nature's needs’, ‘Man's needs’ and ‘Balance of Nature and Man’, and their relationships for achieving UNM (Fig. 1 ).

Tetrahedron structure of the new conceptual framework. The three upper skeletons represent the main strategic goals of the framework, focusing on ‘Nature's needs’, ‘Man's needs’ and ‘Balance of Nature and Man’, respectively The base plain represents the enabling conditions (e.g. mainstreaming, capacity building and resource mobilization) for assuring effective implementation of the strategic plan.

The base plain in the bottom represents the enabling conditions (e.g. mainstreaming, capacity building and resource mobilization) acting as the footstone of the whole framework. Each of the three skeletons has a clear goal, which combined with the others, will lead towards UNM. The three are (1) meet nature's needs for protection, (2) meet humans’ needs for wellbeing, and (3) achieve sustainable development that leads to a new kind of prosperity which respects nature's needs, and unites and balances the needs of nature and human. These goals also correspond to the three main objectives of CBD including biodiversity conservation, equitable sharing of benefit (wellbeing) and sustainable use of biodiversity. When all three strategic goals are supported by another goal of adequate enabling conditions, we can achieve UNM.

The key point of this is that true integration of nature and man (UNM) means integrating human development goals and biodiversity goals as equal and mutually reinforcing. Both have their own needs which must be met, and where they meet they must be co-equal and inextricably intertwined.

While the Unity of Nature and Man provides an alternative conceptual framework to rethink and deal with our relationship to nature, further developments are needed to enable its effective implementation. Here we propose four dimensions that should be examined to enable the changes that can balance the needs of nature and man moving forwards to achieve the strategic goals of CBD and 2050 UNM Vision.

Transformation of value systems underpins the departure from business-as-usual

Based on the above discussion, the long-term misinterpretation of our relationship with nature and the resulting interferences are responsible for today's environmental crisis. Previous failures evidenced that business-as-usual cannot slow the rate of biodiversity loss, let alone put it on a path to recovery. Departure from business-as-usual will not happen naturally, especially with the opposition from those with vested interests [ 3 , 4 ], but can be underpinned and fostered by alternative value systems of whole societies. Recognition and respect of nature's intrinsic value as well as positioning man as part of nature will motivate people to move to address the problem and seek the ideal state of Unity of Nature and Man. The shift of value systems will enhance individuals’ and societies’ internal connection with nature [ 17 ], and drive policy, technology and humanity development on the track towards sustainability. The achievement of global biodiversity targets relies on collective global efforts. Although UNM originates from classical Chinese philosophy, its core is shared by different cultures and perspectives worldwide, e.g. the ancient ‘Mother Earth’, ‘Gaia’ in South America, ‘Brahman’ in India and modern environmental ethics. In this light, UNM is promising to align efforts of different parties and communities to a unified vision. This nature also allows for UNM and its principles to be translated easily into language that facilitates parties and communities developing specific solutions for balancing local developments with nature and sharing useful implementation experiences.

Holistic view and systems thinking promotes required knowledge and nexus approaches

Interactions between nature and humanity, including between ecosystems and human wellbeing, are complex. To address the current environmental crisis, including biodiversity loss, requires a deepening understand of this complexity, which can be informed by UNM philosophy. Knowledge of coupled human-nature or socio-ecological systems, including that of indigenous and local communities [ 12 ], should be accumulated and should evolve through enhanced interdisciplinary research and adoption of a more holistic view of UNM that regards nature and human as an organic whole. As biodiversity is a multifaceted issue intertwined with human development, nexus (integrated) and system-oriented approaches are needed to simultaneously achieve goals of biodiversity conservation, related human wellbeing improvement, and to seek a balance in the UNM framework. Systems thinking focusing on dynamic relationships of these three dimensions, including their elements, is necessary to identify effective solutions to address complex challenges of biodiversity loss and sustainable development. Some good practices are emerging. For instance, the Nature-based Solutions aims to provide human wellbeing and biodiversity benefits simultaneously with support of nature [ 18 ], and the policy innovation of Ecological Conservation Redline, under a broader institutional framework of Ecological Civilization in China, is designed to guarantee both the national ecological security and essential ecosystem services [ 19–21 ]. These concepts and practices offer references and inspiration for other countries to develop integrated solutions to sustain biodiversity benefits and human wellbeing.

Transformative changes to tackle indirect drivers of biodiversity loss and concrete commitments of Parties

Based on the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services issued by IPBES, three goals of CBD and sustainable future cannot be met along current trajectories, and are only possible through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors [ 3 , 4 ]. According to Donella Meadows, there are ‘leverage points’ where small shifts can lead to fundamental changes in the system towards sustainability [ 22 ]. Although specific leverage points vary across contexts, a shift of value systems, as well as visions of a good life, are agreed to be deep leverage points for enabling transformative changes from current trends to more sustainable ones [ 4 , 17 , 23 ]. In this light, the transformation of how we value nature and the way we deal with the relationship to nature proposed by the UNM makes it fundamental momentum and also enhancement of other leverage points for societal changes. Additionally, three goals in the UNM conceptual framework, namely meet nature's needs, meet human’s needs, and their balance through sustainable development, reflect the complex interconnection between biodiversity issues and humanity development. Endeavors to reach these goals will promote knowledge accumulation of social-ecological systems, including externalities and telecouplings, while the UNM philosophy's holistic view can inform and foster integrated solutions for the nexus of relevant goals featured by complex interactions and multi-sector involvement, all of which can underpin desirable transformative changes in different aspects. On the other hand, the realization of UNM Vision and its potential contributions to CBD’s three strategic goals and the Sustainable Development Goals rely on concrete commitments from Parties. The shared aspiration to build a sustainable future for both humanity and nature will form the first step of global communities towards the UNM Vision. Mainstreaming humans’ dependence on nature and the necessity to respect the intrinsic value of nature and needs will help to generate a sense of responsibility to act for nature and biodiversity across sectors in different scales. Parties should take the form of commitments to achieve transformative changes in current unsustainable production and consumption patterns to reduce indirect drivers for biodiversity loss, and in governance approaches to handle nexus challenges on simultaneously meeting the needs of nature and man in the long term. Last but not least, a transformative resource mobilization strategy is essential for sufficient and effective financial support for the ambitious UNM Vision, especially against the background of post-pandemic recovery of the world's economy.

A Chinese temple showing the step path towards the UNM Vision. Standing on the base plain of ‘enabling conditions’, three strong pillars symbolize the three main strategic goals of this new framework. These support upgrading of the stage goals of 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050. By achieving these goals, we can finally reach the vision of UNM, ‘Unity of Nature and Man’.

A phased approach and milestones on area-based target to reach the UNM Vision

‘Unity of Nature and Man’ aiming to tackle the long-term imbalance of meeting the needs of nature and man is an ambitious vision. It can be reached only by achieving stage goals one by one following periodic strategic plans with collective global efforts. Milestone(s) or overarching goal(s) can motivate willingness of stakeholders to develop ambitious but realistic plans on biodiversity conservation and enhanced mainstreaming. Notwithstanding much debate on the bold protected area target [ 24–27 ], the Post-2020 GBF should still be expected to aim higher on the area-based protection/retention target and regard it as a critical milestone for global biodiversity conservation in the coming decades. Land-use change acted as the sharpest contradictions between nature and man over the past 50 years [ 4 ]. The decline of nature will not stop unless biodiversity per se has sufficient space to sustain whilst ensuring man's needs are met guided by the Agenda of Sustainable Development. Bold, as well as deliberate, area-based target will drive transition of contradictions to managed trade-offs between needs of nature and man, by adopting other effective conservation measures (OECMs), spatial planning, and adaptive management and governance interventions. Meanwhile, the use and management of biodiversity from ecosystems to genes to meet humans’ needs must be bounded within the limit of planetary boundaries and fixed on the road of sustainability. Moving forward, we suggest a series of milestones/overarching targets to delineate the step path of reaching the UNM Vision as ‘by 2030, safeguard 1/4 of the Earth with integral, functioning, and connected ecosystems to support   sustainability both of nature and its contributions to humanity while addressing other direct drivers on biodiversity loss, and step along the path to increase the proportion of the safeguarded Earth to 1/3 by 2040, and 1/2 by 2050 to finally achieve the 2050 Vision – the Unity of Nature and Man’ (Fig. 2 ).

We greatly thank Dr. Harvey Locke and four reviewers for critical comments to improve our manuscript.

This work was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31000000 and QYZDY-SSWSMC019) and the Creative Research Group Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (31821001).

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

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Relationship between man and nature

Man and nature have been walking hand in hand since the beginning of time. It was probably the first theme to appear in art. Nature has been the source of inspiration for many, from the west to the east, i.e. from Egypt to Japan. The relationship of man with nature gradually changed as he evolved. Nature was first seen in its true form until man gradually learned that he can alter nature. As he developed, he learned that he can interpret nature in different ways. 

The different civilizations around the world have helped man learn and create or depict nature in his way. There are various descriptions of gardens in treaties made by historians or in the work of philosophers, poets and writers. Archaeologists have revealed interesting information about the garden decoration of the ancient world. Gardens obtained special popularity with the courts of rulers of the countries of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome.

We see gardens from prehistoric times; when our ancestors first began claiming territory. As they evolved they started developing more and more, from shelter to clothing to food and finally pleasure. The man was a hunter then, he slowly learned how to survive. The way nature influenced man during prehistoric times is seen in quite a few examples like The Carnac Stone and Cave Paintings in France, Stonehenge in Wiltshire, Easter Islands and Nazca Lines in Peru, White Horse in Uffington, etc. 

These are all brilliant examples of how intentionally or unintentionally man got drawn to this process of rearrangement of nature that would provide an increase in the aesthetic sense in man.

Landscape design in Egypt was influenced by all of their beliefs as well as the natural context of Egypt. For example, they had high surrounding walls for protection, water bodies because of desert conditions, etc. They put a lot of thought into the planning system. Because of the climatic context, the major part of the garden was occupied by channels, ponds, pools . Egyptians saw utility over beauty. Hence they planted a lot of sweet-smelling plants in their gardens. Egyptians developed rectangular symmetric plans and used rhythm exclusively as a composition. Egyptian gardens were mainly developed from what they had. 

Greek gardens were a combination of utilitarian, religious, and aesthetical features. The Greeks were fond of nature, and they made sure all their structures like the theatres, forums, squares looked like they were growing from nature. Greeks put a lot of thoughtfulness into their design. They let the structure they build merge in with the nature around it. Man sees things and tries to imitate them which results in the formation of new things. Greeks took the Persians and Egyptians as inspiration which resulted in their kind of design. The Greeks combined the built work with the natural landscape in a very harmonious way. 

An example of one such structure which describes best how Greeks were influenced by nature is the Miletus Theatre where one can see that the theatre is built along the slope of the hill and the nature around it is used as a backdrop.

Romans are said to be rigid people. They considered strength, power and size to be very important. There were class systems in Rome that gradually led to the fall of it. They designed gardens that displayed their grandeur. They were highly influenced by the Greeks and the Egyptians. The Romans attempted to change nature to refine their gardens and give them an air of splendour. A lot of open spaces were designed which were for the public. 

The new gardens that were designed and built after the fall of the Roman Empire were no longer as grand as they used to be. They partially resembled the Roman gardens before the fall and also slightly resembled the gardens of the Ancient East. The traditions of Roman landscape design were further developed in the Italian gardens and then in the regular parks of Europe.

The number of crusades brought about a lot of new cultural movements which brought about the Renaissance. It vividly appeared in Italy. Landscape design became one of the most integral artistic works. Italy is a mountainous region because of which a lot of terraces were built in the gardens which were further connected to the house. Water was a very important feature in these gardens and was incorporated in the form of fountains, ponds, and waterfalls. These water bodies were used to accentuate the buildings . The gardens open up as you go upwards. 

The concept of topiary, i.e., plants in different shapes started here and this method is called Bosque. This gave a strictly planned look to the gardens. Parterres which are patterns in hedges are also one of the features that were widely used. The Italian landscape design is a complete artistic work where nature and skill harmoniously merge. 

The transition from Renaissance to Baroque cannot be determined, however many of the features from the Renaissance style were taken over in Baroque style. The Baroque style had found its unique expression in France. Obscene display of wealth was man’s main motive and hence all the structures built were phenomenal in scale to display power. There was no limit with regards to site or capabilities hence dominance prevailed over nature. There was more geometry and axis and no free-flowing forms. Gardens were built as a continuation to the house, hence they had equal grandeur.

The journey from prehistory to baroque is that of evolution and adoption. Man learned from nature, modified it, and beautified it. During prehistoric times, he was an amateur, his conditions led to some landscaping. However, as he evolved he learnt more about it and developed it further. The baroque style shows class and wealth. However, the ones in between show the evolution of man’s relationship with nature. The relationship of man with nature is varying and complex.

Reference | Man and nature

Landscapedesign-online.com. (2011). HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN | Landscape Design and Site Planning. [online] Available at: http://www.landscapedesign-online.com/blog/history-landscape-design [Accessed 11 Apr. 2019].

Mithila’s curiosity is always keeping her on a lookout for new things to learn. She has a penchant for reading and holds interest in landscape, interiors and history. Along with these interests she’s constantly working on a way to inculcate her love for textiles in her practice.

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Photo Essay: The Uneasy Relationship Between Humans and Nature

There’s no place on earth untouched by human activity: This was clear as Lucas Foglia whizzed across the vast, white expanse of Alaska's Juneau Ice Field last summer. He was riding an old pair of skis towed by scientist Uwe Hofmann, who periodically stopped his snowmobile to measure the rapidly melting glacier.

“It was an unforgettable experience,” says Foglia , a photographer featured in WIRED’s December issue . "Being in a place that big and wild made me feel small in a way I had never felt before, yet I knew that humans as a whole were changing that landscape.”

Foglia explores this tension in his stunning new book Human Nature . It features nearly 60 photographs that illustrate the varying ways nature impacts humans and humans impact nature—for better or worse. "It focuses on our relationship with nature, how we need wild places even if they have been shaped by us," Foglia says. "I think of each photo in the book as the tip of the iceberg that hopefully points viewers to the larger story underneath the surface of the image."

Foglia grew up on a farm in rural Long Island. Watching the surrounding fields slowly being swallowed up by housing tracts inspired his work documenting the natural environment—a focus that grew in intensity after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the eastern seaboard in 2012. “Climate change is on the news every day these days, but I realized I didn’t know what the science looked like.” he says. “I felt like photography could clearly describe the process of the science.”

Over the next five years, Foglia trailed scientists in five countries with his medium format digital camera as they took samples of air pollution, studied geysers, and launched ozone balloons into the atmosphere. He also examined governmental efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. The Singapore Green Plan, for instance, requires developers to include green spaces in new buildings, while the Agricultural Experiment Station in New York helps farmers develop crops that can withstand changing weather patterns (more on that here ).

These programs matter not only because people need nature to survive. They also matter because people need nature to thrive. Foglia learned this while documenting the research of David Strayer, a University of Utah neuroscientist who hooks participants up to EEG caps and facial electrodes as they spend time in rugged landscapes. His research shows that unplugging in nature actually increases cognitive function, helping people better solve creative problems. "He said that, in his opinion, time in wild places is part of human nature," Foglia says.

Strayer's idea reverberates throughout Human Nature . It explains the feeling of wonder and freedom Foglia felt while gliding across a remote Alaskan ice field—and further underscores the need to preserve places like it.

Human Nature is out this month from Nazraeli Press .

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Relationship Between Man and Nature Essay

The character of the relations existing between the nature and a human traditionally becomes one of the main subjects of attention of philosophy, which finds the most general principles of the structure of nature and organization of a man as such, using the possibility of ontological descriptions and epistemological explanations. The understanding of the relationship between man and nature, which in varying degrees is approaching to the reality, evolved as the humanity was accumulating experience forming the roots of knowledge. Further in this paper, we’ll cover the essence of nature and wilderness in general and in a particular place, and will open their meaning through the prism of human influence and penetration into civilization processes, as well as claim that only a comprehensive, interdisciplinary scientific approach to the discussed notions will ensure the effectiveness of research in this area.

The connection between the notions and the place of a man inside

Living organisms on our planet, evolving in close contact with inanimate matter and adapting to the environment, have at the same time overtaken it with active transforming and organizing influence and have become a powerful factor in the evolution of the surface area of the planet. The development of life, according to Darwin’s theory, was accompanied by the emergence of new species of living beings (Darwin 112-114). The peak of this process was the emergence of pre-human and later human of modern type who, according to scientists appeared 43-45 thousand years ago. As man has been perfecting himself and his labor, the relationship between human beings has been changing. On this basis the society was formed. Society can only be discussed with the advent of human of modern type or Homo sapiens. The process of origin of man and society is called antroposociogenesis. The progress of antroposociogenesis is mediated not only by the development of human consciousness, but also improvement of man’s labor. This activity serves as a link between man and nature.

Nature is what exists near the human race, what man himself comes from. Peculiarities that are characteristic of man (and society) exclusively are not included in nature. Human is natural by virtue of his physical and biological content. He is super-natural as produces complex forms of mental and social life. Man in the relationship with nature realizes his two unique abilities. He changes the nature and symbolizes himself in it, “records” himself in it.

Nowadays, the word “nature” is used in many meanings. Some dictionaries explain nature as a living matter, everything material, the Universe, all the creation, everything visible, subjected to the five senses, but a more common definition is our world, earth, and everything created in it. The main sustained uses of the term have been determined. Thus, one of them is connected with the attitude to nature as to a habitat; the other involves the transformation of nature into an object of scientific knowledge and practical activities of man. The word “nature” can be used in a broad and narrow sense. Nature in a broad sense is the being, the Universe, all the variety of matter in motion, its varied states and properties. In this case, nature includes the society as well. However, there is another point of view according to which nature is everything that confronts the society, something without which a society, that is, people with the product created by their hands, cannot exist.

The definition of “wilderness” is complex and partially contradictory. When it becomes necessary to refer the term “wilderness” to any particular area, the difficulties are amplified. The question is which wild area should be classified as wilderness, or vice versa. If to stick to absolute purity, in this case, the term “wilderness” should mean the land that has never been touched by man. However, for many people, minimal contact with people and their creations does not ruin the characteristics of the word “wilderness”. The question is about the degree of contact. Can it be affected by the presence of Indians or a herd of cattle? Or an empty tin of beer? Or an aircraft in the sky? The question of degree is an additional problem. Mental criterion for the word “wilderness” is as important as physical. In theory, if a person does not see, hear or feel the smell of civilization, he/she is in the wilderness.

A researcher and campaigner for the protection of wilderness, William Cronon, demanded to understand the term as a territory which is impossible to cross without any motor vehicles in one day (Cronon 72). Aldo Leopold, ecologist and philosopher, has formulated his own standard – the ability of the area to cover a two-week trip.

Leopold defined wilderness as a continuous territory saved in a natural state suitable for hunting and fishing, large enough to take two weeks to pass through it, and with no roads, engineering structures and other creations of man (Leopond 168). While agreeing that most people may approve a motorized access to places of recreation, he at the same time stated the need to take into account the minority that wants to experience the primitive conditions of movement and life in the wild. Wilderness has a positive effect on their health, but the possibility find it is melting day by day. In conclusion, Leopold proposed to make the Gila national forest in New Mexico a protected wilderness area.

However, old problems persisted. What should be really meant by pristine? And how many “visits” can wilderness withstand? Aware of these problems and a tendency of the meaning imparted to the word “wilderness”, depending on the state of mind, mood, it is very tempting to let this word to define itself and to perceive as wild the places that people usually call “wild”.

A possible solution of the problem is the concept of the range of conditions or environments, starting from complete naturalness on the one hand, and full of civilization on the other. This idea of the space between the poles is useful because it involves shades and blending. Wilderness and civilization are antipodes and are mixed in various proportions, determining the features of the territory. The middle part of the spectrum includes the rural or pastoral environment (tillage), which represents the balance of powers of nature and man. One point closer to the pole of wilderness human impact is less common. In this part of the spectrum civilization exists as an external border post. On the other hand, the extent of human exposure increases.

The need to detect the watershed, where virginity becomes civility, becomes less oppressive. Besides, the idea of the spectrum may help to make distinction between wilderness and such concepts as countryside, borderlands and the rural area.

Depending on the context, “nature” may be synonymous with wilderness, or it may mean the city park. The factor of scale is also important for determining wilderness. In this category, the land would be dominating as the environment without a man, a place of wild beasts. The presence of something like cans of beer or even a road would not disqualify the area, but would move it to the pole of civility. On the other hand, in the land ethic of Aldo Leopold, wilderness played an important role of a model of environmental excellence. Civilization has changed the environment to the extent that the unchangeable wilderness gained importance of an “indicator of the normal state, a demonstration of how healthy land maintains itself as an organism” (Leopold 174). Leopold stated that wild places demonstrate what the land initially was, what it is and what it should be like.

Here, evolution functions without interference from the part of a man, providing a kind of standard suitable for measuring the impact of a man on places and consequences of violence. For instance, comparing the countercultural symbol of long hair with wild nature, Snyder claimed that civilization preferred to be cut and clean-shaven, just as it preferred an orderly shaped environment. Hair cut was like pastoral landscape. Natural, uncombed and free hair meant naturalness; and this long hair was equivalent to adopting and feeling the power of nature (Snyder 45-48). The approach alternative to this one and supported by the mankind for centuries meant the conquest of nature or its deception. Snyder and his countercultural adherents believed that the time for change has come. In particular, Snyder hoped that “new, environmentally sensitive, harmony-oriented culture” (Snyder 155) would emerge, together with a new lifestyle based on the proximity to wild nature.

Following the idea of Emerson that “all the nature is a metaphor of human thought” (Emerson 27) and pushed by this metaphorical tool, we suppose that wilderness primarily offers the necessary freedom and solitude. Therefore, the wildlife was the best option for the inhabitance, for the purpose of living, working and creating blessings of civilization. Speaking about the situation of a person in the wild world, Thoreau states the “broad, titanic and inhuman nature grabbed a man in an awkward moment, caught him alone and tries knock out his divine spirit” (Thoreau 26). In other words, the transcendental belief in the symbolic meaning of natural objects has shaken. Thoreau says that wilderness became a more appropriate place for nasty idols than for God, and being imbibed by the titan, the personality as such has gone (Thoreau 34). But simultaneously, this is a rude awakening for a man who is afraid of the wild forest with its loneliness and darkness.

This somehow makes the problem become clear, and the question is thus narrowed to whether it is possible to bring together the savage endurance and intelligence of the civilized man. In other words, whether people can survive retaining all the advantages of the civilization without suffering from its disadvantages. Probably, the answer lies in a combination of wilderness and the achievements of cultural sophistication. Excess of any of these options should be avoided. Viability, heroism and endurance that are traced from the wild nature must be balanced by the delicacy, sensitivity and intellectual and moral growth which are specific civilization and human culture. Here, the natural way of existence is seen in the right proportion of thought and experience; and an ideal person should occupy a central position, drawing both wild nature and anthropomorphized places.

From the very beginning of their history, people have had a conscious thought to what the natural sources of a man and society are, what kind of connection exist between a man and nature, and what human attitude towards nature should be like. All these issues have not yet received a clear answer. But with increasing knowledge about himself, about the surrounding world and his place in this natural system, a man has changed his views on the nature and their relationships. The appeal to the course of history helps tracing the change those attitudes in a wide range: from the proclamation of the ideas on the inseparable connection and harmony with nature up to placing a man on a pedestal which is unattainable for any other living creatures and from which a man supposedly can dispose nature unlimitedly, of his own will and understanding. However, such ideas were relatively quickly debunked by the natural course of history.

The real relationships between nature, wilderness and subjects created by a man suggest that no matter how people tried to rise above nature and ignore the natural conditions of their lives, they are totally subject to these conditions and depend on them. Perhaps, in some cases the situation limits human intentions and makes abandon some plans, but despite the short-term difficulties, a man must finally come to a conscious elucidation of the inevitability of this fact.

Works Cited:

Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness”. In Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995. Print. Darwin, Charles. The Origin Of Species. Signet Classics, 2003. Print. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. CreateSpace, 2010. Print. Leopold, Aldo. “The Land Ethic”, In A Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001. Print. Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. North Point Press, 1990. Print. Thoreau, Henry David. Walking. Bottom of the Hill Publishing, 2011. Print.

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Man vs. Nature: Handling Conflict in Writing with Examples

Krystal N. Craiker

A story without conflict isn’t much of a story at all. There are seven main types of conflict in fiction , and most stories can fall into one or more of these categories.

One of these conflicts is known as man vs. nature.

Man vs. nature is a story that writers come back to over and over.

Humans have been in conflict with nature since the dawn of humankind. Sometimes nature wins, and sometimes humans do.

Because it’s grounded in a reality we all know, man vs. nature can provide endless possibilities for fictional story ideas.

In fact, some of your favorite books and movies might feature this conflict!

What Is Man vs. Nature?

What are some examples of man vs. nature, what are some good man vs. nature books, what are the best man vs. nature movies.

The man vs. nature conflict is when the protagonist, either alone or together with the other characters, is in direct opposition to the forces of nature.

There is some event or situation in the natural world that is causing a problem. If more than one character is affected, your characters must work together to overcome the problem.

While the story will still have antagonists , the major conflict is with nature itself. This might occur in the form of a natural disaster like a tornado or blizzard. Drought and famine are common in literature.

There could be a supernatural force behind the nature conflict, although the supernatural element is not the main player in the conflict. The man vs. nature conflict can also be about when a character faces resistance from a specific element of nature in achieving their goals.

Sometimes, you might see the natural world as the “good guy” in these stories, while other times you might root for the characters.

It’s important to note that man vs. nature does not refer to only male characters. In this sense, “man” refers to humankind.

Modern scholars and writers often refer to the conflict as person vs. nature or character vs. nature. We’ll be using these interchangeably in this article.

Is Man vs. Nature a Theme?

You might hear people refer to the theme of man vs. nature. However, it’s less a theme and more a conflict.

A good story has several major components: a theme, a message or moral, a conflict, character goals and motivations, and a plot structure.

The conflict drives the overall story and pushes the characters into action. Theme, on the other hand, is the overall meaning of a story. The theme is conveyed through different elements like characters, setting, and conflict.

In person vs. nature conflicts, there are many themes that might appear. Here are some common themes that fit well with person vs. nature stories:

• Perseverance/the indomitable human spirit
• Change vs. tradition
• Pride as a downfall
• Greed as a downfall
• Chaos vs. order
• Dangers of materialism, capitalism, or technology
• Inevitability of death and/or destruction
• The power of nature

This is by no means an exhaustive list of themes that might feature in a character vs. nature conflict.

The theme works with the conflict, and the man vs. nature conflict highlights the theme. Together, these provide a message to the reader.

What Are the Major Types of Conflict in Literature?

Man vs. nature is just one type of conflict. There are seven major types recognized by most writers and scholars. They are:

• Person vs. person
• Person vs. society
• Person vs. nature
• Person vs. supernatural
• Person vs. technology
• Person vs. self
• Person vs. destiny

Each of these can be the underlying conflict in a great story, no matter the medium or genre.

Why Is Man vs. Nature a Great External Conflict?

Conflicts in a story can be internal or external. The character vs. nature conflict is an example of external conflict. It’s a conflict that writers come back to time and time again. Why?

Man vs. nature is an excellent external conflict for a story for many reasons. First of all, there are endless ways that nature can provide a problem for your characters.

If your characters are facing natural disasters, there are plenty to choose from.

Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, blizzards, avalanches, volcanic eruptions, dust storms, and wildfires can be excellent catalysts for your characters to do something.

Droughts and famines, whether as natural disasters or effects of a natural or man-made disaster, are also great story fodder.

The effects of mankind trying to control nature is another conflict that comes up in real life and in stories—overfarming, deforestation, draining of resources, and pollution can provide ample story ideas.

When a character faces resistance or struggles in parts of nature, like surviving in new or hostile environments, the story can be a great way to explore other conflicts and themes that are more internal.

The natural force becomes a metaphor for inner conflict.

While some fantasy stories may use a supernatural force as the catalyst for the conflict, the overall conflict should lie in a natural force.

Otherwise, the main conflict of the story would be person vs. supernatural.

Why are there so many types of conflict in nature? Because humans are inextricably linked to nature.

We all deal with the effects of natural forces, whether it’s climate change, the weather, disasters, or just our environment. It’s something familiar that has been part of our entire history.

We can apply that same familiarity to any story involving nature. The characters don’t have to be human, and the world doesn’t have to be planet Earth.

I’ve never been trapped in a desert on an alien planet, but I’ve felt extreme heat sickness. I’ve never crossed a frozen tundra, but I have lost heat during an ice storm in a place that is woefully underprepared for freezing weather.

Man vs. nature needs strong sensory details to pull readers in. ProWritingAid’s Sensory Report can help you hit all the senses to make your nature conflict engaging and real.

You'll see how many of each type of sense word you've used so you can create a balanced, rounded description. Try it for free .

Because of that familiar sense of being in conflict with our environment, we can invest ourselves emotionally into conflicts involving the natural world.

This is what keeps writers writing man vs. nature conflicts and what keeps readers reading them.

There are myriad examples of the man vs. nature conflict, from classic literature to obscure indie films. We’ve divided the following well-known examples into books and movies.

It’s hard to pick just a few examples of great person vs. nature books, but here are some great ones.

Dune by Frank Hebert is one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.

Though the story is filled with political intrigue and social commentary, the core of the conflict is environmental.

The environment of each planet shapes the features of its civilization, and the scarcity of water is a major plot point. The overall message is that man and nature will always be at odds.

One will always destroy the other.

Margaret Atwood’s dystopian trilogy ( Oryx and Crake , The Year of the Flood , MaddAddam ) explores the conflict between humans and nature, specifically when humans try to master nature.

The series takes place in a society where corporate greed and scientific technology tried to master nature, resulting in a biological catastrophe.

Throughout the series, Atwood explores the importance of humans reconnecting with nature and accepting that they are a part of the natural world, not the masters of it.

Award-winning children’s book Julie of the Wolves , written by Jean Craighead George, explores the character vs. nature conflict through an Inuit girl on the Arctic tundra.

Through a series of tragic events, Julie finds herself living with a pack of wolves to survive the harsh environment.

The story explores the theme of modernity vs. tradition and cultural evolution. Though written for children, this book is a poignant read for all ages.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is a quintessential man vs. nature story.

Santiago, the protagonist, has a respect for nature. It has provided him with his livelihood, and he personifies different elements of the natural world.

But the man vs. nature conflict occurs when he must fight the sea and a giant fish to regain his lost status in society.

The theme that this conflict illustrates is struggle and perseverance.

Those are just a few examples of person vs. nature in literature. Can you think of any more?

Movies are stories, too, and person vs. nature conflicts are always popular in Hollywood. Here are a few excellent examples.

The 1996 film Twister is a fun example of person vs. nature, specifically natural disasters.

The story follows a group of storm-chasers. Jo is determined to capture readings from inside a tornado.

As the tornadoes get more and more powerful and deadly, the movie shows the dangers of recklessly chasing an impossible goal and the devastation it can leave behind.

Cast Away starring Tom Hanks is another great example.

The man vs. nature conflict occurs when the main character Chuck survives a plane crash and must survive on a deserted island.

The themes of man’s resourcefulness and will to survive are explored as he learns to survive on the island and later finds his way home.

It also explores the theme of nature as a tool to reconnect with what is important in life.

The Day After Tomorrow is an apocalyptic movie released in 2004.

It’s an action film that is also a warning about the dangers of climate change, though with a very Hollywood flare.

A paleoclimatologist warns that climate change could cause a new ice age, but he’s ignored. Then the ice age arrives almost immediately with severe, tragic storms.

The person vs. nature conflict shows people trying to survive this sudden climatological shift.

It illustrates the consequences of human-driven climate change and the dangers of ignoring scientific warning signs.

We’re sure you can think of many other man vs. nature movies, from The Perfect Storm to Sharknado .

There is no shortage of story ideas for character vs. nature conflicts. It’s a great way to use a familiar conflict to illustrate important, relevant themes.

What are your favorite man vs. nature stories?

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Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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Search The Public Domain Review

George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature (1864)

George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (London: S. Low, Son and Marston, 1864).

We have known about the origins of our disaster for longer than we like to imagine. More than 150 years ago, George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) published Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action — a study of how human action modifies the physical world, from the crust of the earth to the atmosphere.

The scope of Man and Nature is vast. Beginning with chapters on “the general effects and the prospective consequences of human action upon the earth’s surface and the life which peoples it”, Marsh then proceeds to trace

the history of man’s industry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods, upon the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a concluding chapter upon Probable and Possible Geographical Revolutions yet to be effected by the art of man.

Despite the vastness of the project, Marsh’s message to readers was clear: If people do not take care of the earth, the earth will cease to take care of them.

If we now find this claim self-evident, this is partly due to Marsh’s “epoch-making” work. For centuries, it had been taken for granted that the resources of the land and the sea were inexhaustible. Marsh, however, mustered historical evidence against this mythological claim, pointing out that the Mediterranean landscapes described by ancient writers seldom resembled their “present physical condition”:

[M]ore than one half of their whole extent — including the provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants — is either deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desolation, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness and population.

What Marsh here calls “desolation” is what’s now known as “desertification” brought about — as he also argues in Man and Nature — by the destruction of forests.

Marsh was born in rural Woodstock, Vermont, in 1801. Like his father, Charles, he would attend Dartmouth College in New Hampshire before going on to study law and serve as a representative to Congress. He wrote his many books — including an Icelandic grammar, a study of the camel, and two volumes of English linguistics — while leading an active life as a lawyer, statesman, and ambassador, first to the Ottoman Empire (in 1852–53) and later to Italy, where he would be the longest-serving envoy in US history, remaining there from 1861 until his death in 1882.

Unlike many early American conservationists, Marsh was more a scholar than an outdoorsman . Whereas John Muir made arguments for preserving the wilderness that appealed to the heart, Marsh aimed squarely at the head. He was fond of forests and other wild spaces (and played a role in the establishment of the Adirondack Park in New York State), but he emphasized above all the harm to humanity their destruction might cause — desertification, flooding, resource scarcity, and soil erosion, among other things.

Human action transforms the earth, Marsh writes in the concluding pages of Man and Nature , “though our limited faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their immediate, still more their ultimate consequences.” Lest this seem like a reason to shrug our shoulders and turn our backs, Marsh adds:

But our inability to assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of natural arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence of such causes […] and we are never justified in assuming a force to be insignificant because its measure is unknown, or even because no physical effect can now be traced to it as its origin.

The mystery of how our actions affect the landscape was not, Marsh wanted us to understand, an excuse for irresponsibility; it was rather a reason to take responsibility for learning about the ongoing “action and reaction between humanity and the material world”.

• Natural World
• Thought, Reflection & Theory
• Non-fiction
• 19th Century

Jan 8, 2020

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Nature Essay for Students and Children

500+ words nature essay.

Nature is an important and integral part of mankind. It is one of the greatest blessings for human life; however, nowadays humans fail to recognize it as one. Nature has been an inspiration for numerous poets, writers, artists and more of yesteryears. This remarkable creation inspired them to write poems and stories in the glory of it. They truly valued nature which reflects in their works even today. Essentially, nature is everything we are surrounded by like the water we drink, the air we breathe, the sun we soak in, the birds we hear chirping, the moon we gaze at and more. Above all, it is rich and vibrant and consists of both living and non-living things. Therefore, people of the modern age should also learn something from people of yesteryear and start valuing nature before it gets too late.

Significance of Nature

Nature has been in existence long before humans and ever since it has taken care of mankind and nourished it forever. In other words, it offers us a protective layer which guards us against all kinds of damages and harms. Survival of mankind without nature is impossible and humans need to understand that.

If nature has the ability to protect us, it is also powerful enough to destroy the entire mankind. Every form of nature, for instance, the plants , animals , rivers, mountains, moon, and more holds equal significance for us. Absence of one element is enough to cause a catastrophe in the functioning of human life.

We fulfill our healthy lifestyle by eating and drinking healthy, which nature gives us. Similarly, it provides us with water and food that enables us to do so. Rainfall and sunshine, the two most important elements to survive are derived from nature itself.

Further, the air we breathe and the wood we use for various purposes are a gift of nature only. But, with technological advancements, people are not paying attention to nature. The need to conserve and balance the natural assets is rising day by day which requires immediate attention.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conservation of Nature

In order to conserve nature, we must take drastic steps right away to prevent any further damage. The most important step is to prevent deforestation at all levels. Cutting down of trees has serious consequences in different spheres. It can cause soil erosion easily and also bring a decline in rainfall on a major level.

Polluting ocean water must be strictly prohibited by all industries straightaway as it causes a lot of water shortage. The excessive use of automobiles, AC’s and ovens emit a lot of Chlorofluorocarbons’ which depletes the ozone layer. This, in turn, causes global warming which causes thermal expansion and melting of glaciers.

Therefore, we should avoid personal use of the vehicle when we can, switch to public transport and carpooling. We must invest in solar energy giving a chance for the natural resources to replenish.

In conclusion, nature has a powerful transformative power which is responsible for the functioning of life on earth. It is essential for mankind to flourish so it is our duty to conserve it for our future generations. We must stop the selfish activities and try our best to preserve the natural resources so life can forever be nourished on earth.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [ { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Why is nature important?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Nature is an essential part of our lives. It is important as it helps in the functioning of human life and gives us natural resources to lead a healthy life.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “How can we conserve nature?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “We can take different steps to conserve nature like stopping the cutting down of trees. We must not use automobiles excessively and take public transport instead. Further, we must not pollute our ocean and river water.” } } ] }

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Essay on Man and Nature in English For Students & Children

We are Sharing an Essay on Man and Nature in English for students and children. In this article, we have tried our best to provide a Short essay on Man vs Nature for Classes 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 and Graduation in 200, 300, 400, 500, 800 words.

Man and Nature Essay

Some people have the notion that man and nature are opposed to each other. But that is not a fact.

The reality is that we are all around surrounded by nature. Normally, what we call nature is an open space outside the habitations and surrounded by trees or forests, lakes or rivers, etc. Then we regard the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the seas and oceans, the mountains and hills, etc. as parts of nature.

All those are parts of nature, no doubt. But we forget that even in our homes where the rays of the sun may not reach, nature is at work.

We cannot live without air and air is a part of nature. We can’t go without water and water is a part of nature. The food we eat in the form of food- grains, etc. is obtained from plants that grow in fields. All the fruits and vegetables we consume are also derived from plants. Even the milk we take is given to us by cows, buffaloes, and goats after eating plants which get converted into milk in their body. Sugar is also obtained from sugarcane plants. We wear cotton clothes and cotton is obtained from plants that grow in fields.

Nature has a soothing effect on man. If we have a sight of high mountains, sailing clouds and seas, oceans, and lakes, we feel thrilled.

We cannot live without the help of nature. Trees maintain the proper balance of oxygen which is so important for us. They also cause rain without which our crops will wither. So, we should not cut down trees. We should rather grow more of them.

If we love nature, it will love us, guide us and soothe us. Otherwise, we will perish if we try to destroy it.

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Essay on the topic “Harmony of man and nature”

One eternal question that arises before many people in this world: “Should we be in harmony with nature?”. The answer is yes. This is just my point of view on the matter and below I will give my own examples that helped me to come to this conclusion.

I adore nature for everything it gives me throughout my life. Since it is from nature that a person receives a large amount of well-being, the harmony of a person with it is extremely important for the further advancement of the entire society. For this, I would like to give several examples from my own life that would confirm my opinion on this matter.

My association with nature began at the moment when I first decided to go to study and work outdoors. Before that, I was always in my room and felt constant tension from the people around me, because the constant noise quite often prevented me from concentrating on certain things. For several months in a row, I go to my favorite place where I work and nothing prevents me from concentrating on my own thoughts and feelings. This situation works not only when I need to make an order or learn a new language. I decided that harmony with nature can help me in any other field of my activity.

One day I decided to conduct an experiment that finally confirmed my opinion that harmony between man and nature is necessary for anyone. First of all, it is in nature that a person feels more relaxed, because fresh air and beautiful nature around relieves stress. Secondly, we have all the benefits for a full life thanks to the surrounding environment. We have water, food, air – and all this helps to understand that everything we have was given to us by Mother Nature.

The harmony of man with nature is built in such a way that when you are left alone with your own experiences and problems, especially on the street, you constantly think about your future and try to find the right way to overcome life’s problems. But if you immerse yourself in your inner world at home, the effect will be much less than when you do it in nature. I believe that harmony is extremely important not only with nature, but also with one’s inner world.

I like to go out in the evening alone with my phone and headphones, come to my favorite place, enjoy the singing of birds and the beauty of our nature. It helps me clear my brain and understand how I should proceed. I especially like to be in nature while playing sports. I am not completely comfortable in the room or in the gym, but when I go outside, my thirst for self-improvement increases several times.

It seems to me that our brain is built in such a way that sooner or later the understanding of the importance of connecting with the surrounding world comes to human consciousness, because we were born into this world thanks to nature. If you learn to notice the small details that make a person happy while being outdoors, you will definitely understand what I mean.

The problem of harmony between man and nature arose for a reason. The majority of society still does not understand that man and nature are closely connected. We have a huge amount of well-being that comes to us precisely from the environment. Due to man’s carelessness towards the perception of nature, there are currently a large number of environmental problems that sometimes turn into disasters. Thus, it can be concluded that the harmony of man and nature is not present in everyone. If society understood the importance of harmony, it is unlikely that our world would suffer so much from constant disasters that were directly caused by humanity.

The relationship between man and nature is not always harmonious. All this happens because of a person’s poor spiritual development and unwillingness to change something in his life. Nature constantly suffers at the hands of society, because it is we who pollute it, exterminate rare animals and plants, constantly cut down forests, litter on roadsides, and pollute reservoirs. All this leads to the fact that nature is outraged by the actions of mankind, and this causes massive fires, tsunamis, tornadoes and many other deadly natural disasters.

I believe that harmony between man and nature is extremely important. We have a great number of opportunities to finally understand this and live as it was laid in the human mind from the very beginning. If we all unite together and start acting not against nature, but for it, then harmony will really be harmony, and not just in words.

Mother nature always gives us everything we dream of but does not see the gratitude of mankind. Harmony with the environment is primarily a spiritual perception of it. It is necessary to remember that we are closely connected with the environment, so the future of the whole world is only in our hands.

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Violence Against Man and Nature Essay

Introduction, anthropocene and capitalocene, modern ecology discourse, the issues of exploitation, slow violence, interconnected violence.

Bibliography

The discourse concerning the effects of the human activities on the environment is a relatively new one. The first concerns about the effects of the human civilization on the state of the planet were raised in 1960s-1970s. Before that point only a few people talked about the anthropogenic threats to nature and their voices were largely ignored. However, in the modern-day society with the effects of the human activity on the environment becoming more and more evident, the rhetoric is evolving. Nowadays, many activists and researchers started to link the negative effects industry has on the ecosystem to the suffering of the poor and socially insecure citizens in the underdeveloped and developing countries. This paper aims to explore those connections and how they are addressed by the modern activists.

The word “Anthropocene” first emerged in the ecology disputes of the 1970s. It was, as Paul Voosen eloquently put it “an argument wrapped in a word.” 1 The idea was to underline the point that humanity has become a force of nature in its own right powerful enough to shape the planet as a whole. The use of the geological terminology was meant to demonstrate the profoundness of that impact. The idea of the anthropogenic changes in the environment can be traced as far back as the 19 th century, but until recently it was no more than a point of curiosity for a limited number of people. The advent of the Anthropocene discourse marked the beginning of a new era in which the focus shifted from simple curiosity to the assessment of the problems and the search for solutions.

The researchers usually mark the British Industrial Revolution of the 1700s as the beginning of the Anthropocene era. During that era a huge paradigm shift took place. The exploitation of the fossil fuels started in earnest, and the limitations of the lack of energy were shattered. That accelerated the development of humanity and intensified all of our activities. Humans started to produce more, travel more, and consume more 2 . It gave birth not only to the new technology but the new worldviews and the new society. The market economy was born. The Capitalism came into being. That is why some researchers gave this era the name “Capitalocene”. It notes the unbreakable link between the industrialization and capitalism. The Capitalocene rhetoric focuses on the capitalism as a primary driving force behind the anthropogenic changes in the environment. Instead of focusing on the effect of the technology it focuses on the effects of the societal structure adopted by the humanity. That approach is also important to the understanding of the modern-day ecological problems.

The concepts of “Anthropocene” and “Capitalocene” offer an important point of view for the purposes of analyzing the violence against nature and man. They underline the fact that human activity has a huge effect on the environment and can change it for better or for worse. Thus, it is possible to exercise violence against nature as much as it is possible to exercise violence against a fellow human being.

The anthropogenic change of the environment is the cornerstone of the modern disputes regarding the ecology. Despite some people still denying the idea, most of the activists and scientists agree that the Anthropocene is upon us. As such, most ecologists advocate the need to treat the nature with more care. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the humanity managed to use up most of the oil and gas on the planet. The emissions generated by the industry managed to tear an ozone layer hole above the Antarctic. All of these issues cause heightened attention to the ecology. Most of the activists aim to resolve those problems as well as many others plaguing the humanity.

However, those people overlook another important issue. The victims of the poor ecology rarely come into the spotlight of the discussion. The fundamental problem of the relationship between the humanity and the ecosystem of our planet is also rarely discussed. These two issues tie together since both show the exploitative approach of the modern capitalist society.

The modern day human civilization is aimed to expand at any cost. Huge corporations seek new recourses and new market trying to achieve a competitive advantage 3 . Governments extract every speck of valuable materials from the ground seeking to strengthen themselves against the other states. That race for dominance defines the modern human society. And the term “Capitalocene” eloquently summarizes the adverse effect that race has on the environment.

The race for new resources and advantages affects the societies all across the world. The effects are often horrible and woefully underrepresented in the media. Underdeveloped communities constantly suffer from the issues caused by the drive to find new recourses. Their environments are endangered by relentless abuse, and they are subjected to the factors far outside their control, and sometimes even outside their understanding. The nuclear tests on the Marshall Isles are a prime example of a small island community paying a horrible price for the ambitions of the leading world power. The effects of the contamination are still experienced by the population with horribly deformed babies being born more than five decades after the tests themselves 4 . This example underlines the fact that any damage to the environment is also damage to the communities living in that environment.

Another important question is why such violence goes completely unnoticed by a large part of the world population. The question is disturbingly simple – the gradual, slow violence is just not exciting enough. The humans react much more strongly to the sudden flashes of violence, single episodes affecting many people. That is way a plane crash is likely to be covered extensively by the media, while the fifteenth year of famine in the Central Africa is not. The famine will probably claim more lives, but it will do so quietly and in a distant corner of the world which is unnoticed by most denizens of the developed countries. The plane crash will claim fewer but will do so in a single instance and in a way which will bother the central mass media demographics. Politicians are also blind to those issues. Addressing some vague long-term goal does not give the vote you need to come ahead.

The lack of media and political attention to the ongoing stretches-out crises is explained by the same reasons as the uncontrolled exploitation of recourses. It is a race for profit and competitive advantage. The fact that people do not have the same emotional response to the long-term crises does not make them any less important. Even such global issues as global warming can be viewed as slow violence 5 . While the predicted effect of the global warming is overwhelming and all-encompassing, there are no obvious effects or spectacular catastrophes linked to the phenomenon. The global summits on climate change attract some public attention. But the general public interest in the issue is low and usually not intense enough for people to start personally addressing the problem. Thus, even the ecological problems of acknowledged global importance can fall into the category of slow, unnoticed violence. Addressing the issues of slow violence is essential to understanding the plight of the societies living under the burden of ongoing economic, social and ecological oppression.

In the modern world, it is obvious that the issues of environment are deeply entwined with the issues of violence against human societies. The example of the Marshall Isles is an extreme one. In many cases, the violence is much harder to notice or identify. The Chinese abandoned factory facilities house the remnants of abandoned communities still living among the desolation. The movies showing these lands present the scenery of complete decay. The people are famished. They appear degraded and almost animalistic. They are the victims of the complex violence which destroyed the environment and then left their societies to fend for themselves 6 . The forests of South America are destroyed to fuel the production of the developed countries leaving the forest communities deprived of their natural source of recourses. Most of the Africans live in harsh environments and experience even more hardships, as warlords use imported weapons to fight over the natural riches of the continent. Thus, Africans are tortured by the ambitions of their own leaders and western weapon dealers.

All these acts of violence go on and on, day after day. The issues remain unnoticed by the developed countries. For the reason mentioned above, most of the First World demographics only care about the environment when the problem is instantly relatable. The victims of radiation might be much more horrifying than your local garbage dump, but you have never seen them. They are, in fact, half-way across the world from you. They can hardly be blamed for this near-sighted approach since the complexity of those issues is not properly explained to the general audience. So the activism in the developed countries remains limited, and the plight of those experiencing the complex ecological violence remains unheard.

Is There a Solution?

The theory of Capitalocene relates the ecological violence to the very nature of the capitalism 7 . That view seems hard to argue with for anybody who knows the basics of market economy and understands how it is driven by competition. However, simply explaining the problem does not mean solving it.

Since the capitalism seems to be the root of the problem, getting rid of it should be the solution. However, the practice of socialist states proves that not to be the case. In theory, the Marxist and socialist ideologies promote harmony between man and nature. The shared production instruments and shared property are supposed to ensure that there is no wild race for any market advantage. The focus should be on a balanced relationship between man and nature, city and countryside. Charles Fourier, a French socialist, created an image of a true utopia based on those ideals where the production is not driven by the constant race to earn and consume. In his image of the world, everybody works for the necessities of survival and harmonic coexistence with nature. The practice of the socialist states showed that utopia is not attainable. The USSR abused political prisoners in a crazed drive to maintain the planned development. China used and discarded whole societies in the industrial belt. There was no harmony to be seen, only the constantly growing demands of the planned economy.

If the ideals of Marxism and socialism proved to be unattainable what is the way to stop the ecological violence. That question appears to have no clear answer. The world is rooted in capitalism. Every advanced economy is forced into the global market and the capitalist struggle for efficiency. So changing the societal paradigm is virtually impossible. The only evident course of action is to try and attract more attention to the problems of slow ecological violence. Advocating for the needs of the people in another hemisphere is difficult but necessary. Similar issues can affect any community in the world. And every time media and politicians close their eyes to such calamities, it becomes even easier for them to ignore them in the future. Ecological violence should be brought to the public attention regularly. It is the only way to ensure that the search for solutions continues and may one day succeed.

In the modern day, humanity is a force of nature changing the world. It can be destructive or creative. It can maintain or disrupt the natural balance. Ever since the beginning of the Anthropocene, the humanity has been exploiting and consuming all of the resources it could reach. However, in the 1970s, it became evident how destructive the humanity is to nature. The catastrophic results of the anthropogenic changes in the natural order drew the eye of the public and gave birth to the widespread ecological activism. This issue remains the crux of the ecological discourse to this day. Such focus overshadows another set of problems which is no less complicated or important. The human victims of the gradual anthropogenic corruption of the environment are rarely noted. They are ignored in favor of other issues. However, the ecological violence is a problem that anybody can face. Ultimately the modern economies will stop before nothing in the race for competitive advantage. Thus, understanding the complex entwined violence against man and nature is important for everybody. Making sure those issues are not ignored is beneficial for the entire humanity. After all, nobody knows when they will start to choke on the air they have been breathing their whole lives.

Moore, Jason M. “The Capitalocene”. Jason W. Moore Blog . 2014. Web.

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Steffen, Will, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeill. “The Anthropocene: Conceptual And Historical Perspectives”. Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical And Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 842-867.

Wang, Ban. “Of Humans And Nature In Documentary: The Logic Of Capital In West Of The Tracks And Blind Shaft”. Chinese Ecocinema (2011): 156-169.

• Jason M. Moore, “The Capitalocene,” Jason W. Moore Blog , 2014. Web.
• Will Steffen, Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeill, “The Anthropocene: Conceptual And Historical Perspectives”, Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical And Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 842-867.
• Ban Wang, “Of Humans And Nature In Documentary: The Logic Of Capital In West Of The Tracks And Blind Shaft”, Chinese Ecocinema (2011): 156-169.
• Rob Nixon. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor . (Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 8.
• Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor , p. 5.
• “Of Humans And Nature In Documentary: The Logic Of Capital In West Of The Tracks And Blind Shaft “.
• “The Capitalocene”.
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, January 21). Violence Against Man and Nature. https://ivypanda.com/essays/violence-against-man-and-nature/

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Violence Against Man and Nature." January 21, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/violence-against-man-and-nature/.

1. IvyPanda . "Violence Against Man and Nature." January 21, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/violence-against-man-and-nature/.

IvyPanda . "Violence Against Man and Nature." January 21, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/violence-against-man-and-nature/.

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