Economic growth and nature: A large cross-country study published this year makes an uncomfortable claim. Human connection with nature has declined by nearly 60% globally since the industrial revolution, and the erosion is sharpest in countries that score high on conventional measures of economic success. Led by Miles Richardson of the University of Derby, the 61-country analysis finds that urbanisation, rising consumption, and the breakdown of intergenerational contact with local ecosystems have steadily weakened how societies relate to the natural world.
The paradox is stark. Nations that rank high on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index—often treated as shorthand for institutional quality and prosperity—also report lower levels of nature connectedness. The strongest predictors of a close relationship with nature are not income or education, but cultural continuity, spirituality, and everyday contact with local landscapes. As daily interaction with nature disappears from ordinary life, awareness and concern for ecological systems fade with each generation. This is not a cultural curiosity. It is a structural fault line in how modern economies define progress.
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Cities designed away from nature
Urbanisation is often discussed as a demographic trend. In practice, it is also a planning choice. Across much of the world, city expansion has systematically treated green spaces as residual land, something to be accommodated after roads, housing, and commercial real estate are laid out. Lakes are filled, wetlands paved over, and tree cover sacrificed to raise floor-space indices. What disappears is not wilderness, but everyday nature—the parks, street trees, and neighbourhood commons that anchor daily experience.
Municipal finance reinforces this bias. Local governments rely heavily on land monetisation, development charges, and property taxes, all of which reward construction over conservation. Green spaces generate social value but little immediate revenue. Over time, cities are shaped to maximise built-up area rather than liveability. The resulting detachment from nature is therefore not accidental or behavioural alone; it is designed into urban form.
This matters because for a growing majority of the global population, cities are the primary—often the only—interface with nature.
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Consumption without ecological memory
Even as societies grow more detached from nature, their material footprint has expanded rapidly. Humanity now extracts around 60 billion tonnes of raw materials annually, more than 50% higher than three decades ago. If current trends persist, extraction could reach 100 billion tonnes a year by 2030.
The imbalance across income groups is striking. Residents of high-income countries consume up to ten times more natural resources than those in low-income nations. A typical North American uses roughly 90 kilograms of materials per person per day, compared with 45 kg in Europe and about 10 kg in Africa. The United States alone accounts for nearly 30% of global resource consumption, despite having less than 5% of the world’s population.
As Scientific American has noted, the average American over a lifetime consumes over 50 times more goods and services than a Chinese citizen, and as many natural resources as 35 Indians. Richardson’s study does not argue against economic activity. But it does call for a fundamental rethink: nature must be treated as a stakeholder in decision-making, not merely as an input to growth.
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Inequality in access to nature
Aggregate consumption figures obscure an important reality. Those who consume the least often lose access to nature first. In many cities, low-income neighbourhoods are the most deprived of green cover, clean water bodies, and safe public spaces, even as their residents contribute far less to resource depletion or emissions.
This makes nature connectedness a distributional issue, not just a psychological one. Access to parks, tree-lined streets, and open water increasingly tracks income, geography, and social status. Environmental loss thus compounds existing inequalities—worsening health outcomes, increasing heat stress, and narrowing opportunities for childhood development.
When nature becomes a luxury rather than a public good, conservation risks being perceived as elitist. That perception weakens political support for biodiversity protection and climate action, especially in societies already marked by inequality.
Why detachment weakens climate action
The policy consequences of this detachment are now visible. A 2024 study spanning 65 countries, 40 languages, and multiple age and gender groups finds that disconnection from nature is directly contributing to the environmental crisis. Reversing the trend, it argues, requires systematic monitoring and targeted interventions, not sporadic awareness campaigns.
The evidence is cumulative. A 2019 meta-analysis established a robust link between nature connectedness and pro-environmental behaviour. A UK population study in 2020 showed that simple, routine engagement with nature—not wilderness tourism—plays a decisive role in conservation attitudes. Where daily contact disappears, environmental concern weakens.
This helps explain why climate negotiations increasingly drift toward technocratic compromises, while the intrinsic value of ecosystems recedes from view. Environmental debates become abstract, framed around carbon prices and financing gaps, rather than lived relationships with land, forests, or water.
Economic growth and biodiversity
The 2024 global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services identifies human disconnection from nature as a core driver of biodiversity loss—alongside the concentration of wealth and the prioritisation of short-term material gains.
The economic stakes are large. IPBES estimates that halting biodiversity loss could unlock up to $10 trillion in business opportunities and create nearly 395 million jobs globally by 2030. These gains span agriculture, ecosystem restoration, climate resilience, and nature-based services.
Earlier evidence reinforces the point. A 2021 meta-analysis of 147 studies found that individuals with high human–nature connectedness are more environmentally responsible and significantly healthier than those with weak connections. Higher connectedness is consistently associated with better mental health, higher life satisfaction, and lower materialism.
From moral appeal to policy design
Calls to “reconnect with nature” often remain aspirational because they avoid hard choices. Yet the levers are well known. Urban planning norms determine whether green spaces survive redevelopment. Education systems decide whether children encounter nature as part of learning or only through screens. Fiscal policy signals whether biodiversity is an asset to be protected or a constraint to be managed.
Treating nature as a stakeholder requires moving beyond rhetoric. It means mandating minimum green cover in cities, protecting blue–green infrastructure as public capital, embedding outdoor learning in curricula, and requiring governments and firms to disclose nature-related risks alongside climate exposure. These are not lifestyle interventions; they are governance decisions.
Without such choices, economic growth will continue to erode the ecological foundations on which it depends.
Reconnecting prosperity with the natural world
The consequences of disconnection were visible at the recent climate summit in Belém, Brazil. Despite being hosted near the Amazon rainforest, negotiations failed to produce a credible roadmap to phase out fossil fuels or a workable consensus on climate finance. The symbolism was powerful. The substance was not.
There is no technological substitute for a society that values nature as part of daily life. Long-term sustainability depends on re-embedding ecosystems into how cities are built, how children are educated, and how policy trade-offs are judged.
Prosperity that forgets nature may endure for a while. It will not endure for long.
Archana Datta is former Director-General, Doordarshan & AIR, and a former press secretary to the President of India.