The Review Overview
Nature-based interventions is a broad term. It encompasses everything from a walk in a forest to volunteering to rescue seals in the ocean. In research literature, you would also find research under “eco therapy” or “nature-assisted therapy”, and many others. In our review of reviews, the first question was: What do researchers usually mean when they study nature-based interventions?
Our second question was: In these nature-based interventions, what matters? Given the example of walking through a forest, does it matter that you walk with a friend? What if it’s not the forest but just the fact that you’re walking and doing some physical activity? What if nature-based interventions only work for people who already feel a closeness to nature?
We looked at 61 reviews of a total of thousands of studies, and categorised the nature-based interventions that we saw into 13 different categories:
As for our second question, we found that these aspects were important:
What did the review reveal about nature-based interventions?
The review confirmed what the literature hinted at all along, that nature-based interventions are incredibly complex and multifaceted. There is an infinite variety of ways in which we interact with nature, and there is something for everyone. You’d be hard-pressed to say it’s impossible for you to engage in at least one of the 13 categories on a regular basis.
What patterns or gaps emerged that practitioners should know about?
This is something I’ve been thinking about ever since the review came out. For me, it’s all the nature-based interventions we missed! There are many reasons for missing some; as a review of reviews, maybe the words we used to look for them were not broad enough, or maybe they just haven’t been researched enough to appear in reviews. Since the review got published last year, I’ve been thinking of interventions I hope are more researched in the future: stargazing and cloudspotting (as they are the topics of my PhD), but also interventions like speleotherapy, which involve staying in an underground cave for health benefits. I also enjoy going on cave tours and I don’t think those fit into either of the categories we have.
Moreover, categorising something as complex as nature-based interventions always comes with some difficult decisions. For example, we separate green space and blue space interventions, but how about rafting down a river? Is that blue space (the river) or green space (the riverbank full of trees)?
What surprised you in the evidence?
What surprised me the most was the prevalence of the social aspect. We get asked about the roles of physical activity, nature connectedness and environment type all the time, but in reality, the social aspect was the most commonly mentioned.
What does this mean for developing forest-based care?
There are two main takeaways for me with regards to forest-based care. Firstly, for forest-based care, we need forests. For green space interventions, we need green spaces. I’m lucky enough that I was born in Slovakia and grew up in one of the most forest-covered countries in Europe with rich pine forests in my backyard, but this is not the case for most Europeans. There is no point in developing forest therapy when the forests we have are either gone or poor quality.
Secondly, I’ll go back to the social aspect. It works! Whether you go into the forest in a group and talk the whole time or hike by yourself, you will end up liking other people more. And it feels like we could really use some of that these days.
The full article is freely accessible on the Frontiers platform. For questions about the research, contact the corresponding author Branislav Kaleta.
