Crystal: I’m crystal DiMiceli and welcome to the Forces for Nature show.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom? You hear these days? Do you feel like you as just one person can’t really make a difference? Forces for nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview somebody who’s doing great things for animals and the environment. We talk about the challenge they’re addressing the solution.

They have found what keeps them going and will leave you with practical action tips so that you two can become a force for nature. These last two years have really put people through the ringer and studies are showing that one of the ways to help get us out of the holes of depression and anxiety we might find ourselves in is through interacting in and with nature.

Today’s guest Beth Allgood. The founder of OneNature is an expert in this. She looks at how nature and wildlife can contribute to our wellbeing and how current systems are flawed in a way that they ignore the value of things that can lead to greater wellbeing. In fact, sometimes it can result in the opposite.

What does this have to do with animals in conservation? Keep listening.

Hi, Beth. Thank you so much for joining me on forces for nature. It’s so great to have you.

Beth: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be with you.

Crystal: People nowadays are disconnected from nature, whether physically by where they live or just emotionally by not knowing the relevance and importance of nature to them.

There are now so many studies showing the impact that this is having on us and our wellbeing. Can you talk about that

Beth: for a. yes, I would be delighted sometimes when I, when I start talking to people about this, I ask them to think about a time when an encounter with an animal or being in nature or wildlife specifically made them happy, because I think it’s a really good place to kind of personalize and start the whole conversation.

So do you have a story like that, that you can.

Crystal: Oh, yes, I definitely do. Do you want me to share it

Beth: now? Yeah,

Crystal: please, please do. Okay. So one of my favorite animal experiences was visiting the Masai Mara in Kenya going on safari. And I mean, I cried multiple times those days, just like every time we saw something new, I mean, in one of the first animals we saw were some giraffes within this little forest patch and it was just so surreal.

To see an animal like that in nature. And it’s just such an odd creature to think that they exist, you know, and they’re walking amongst trees and it was, it was just incredible. So yeah, that would definitely be my favorite animal encounter story. Oh, that’s beautiful.

Beth: Or moment. Yeah. no, that’s wonderful.

And it’s perfect. And I’m, I’ll, I’ll use it if you don’t mind, as we kind of go through a little bit, because I think. It’s it shows the kind of awe and wonder that people can have with nature. And especially, I feel like with wildlife and everyone that I’ve asked that question to has a story, they have a story.

Sometimes it’s their own dog or cat, and sometimes it’s, you know, a bird and sometimes it’s a whale, but there’s, there’s always something. And sometimes it’s just being in the forest and feeling like you’re part of something bigger than yourself. I think it shows. You have a connection with nature. So anyway, I think it’s important and we’ll come back to it, but okay.

Yes. Around the research studies, there are so many studies that show how nature makes people happy, how we’re connected to it. I think COVID is a really fertile ground for this because there, it was horrible of course, and it gives us some really interesting insights into the role that nature can play in our happiness and our health and our wellbeing.

So in 2021, kind of in the heart of the COVID lockdown, researchers did an analysis of tweets and that showed that 2020. Was the saddest year on Twitter, since it began in 2008, there are a lot of things about it. But I think that the lockdown in particular was one of those. one of those things that made people unhappy.

But another analysis of, of Twitter showed that being in nature, brought a happiness bump that was equivalent to Christmas day, which is con, which is the happiest day on Twitter. So, I mean, there are two really different types of. Studies, but together, I think they’re really interesting. Another thing that brought people joy during the lockdowns was seeing and hearing about wildlife returning to the spaces where they hadn’t been.

I mean, it was viral everywhere. You know, we experience greater wellbeing when we are, when we have that kind of connection, there’s been lots of research about urban areas and green spaces being linked to longer lifespans and improved human health. And even that the more species diversity in those spaces.

The better, the improvement in people’s wellbeing, which is really interesting. I think so even microgreen spaces in cities can have an impact.

Crystal: I could attest to that being true because as you know, I live in Rome, Italy, and it’s a very concrete and stone city. And I just feel like I yearn to see trees.

And when I’m able to get into parks, I just feel. And you could sense that others are feel the same, you know, there’s a rejuvenation happening now in your work. You say that wildlife, not just nature, but also wildlife are key to wellbeing. Why is that important?

Beth: I think it’s really important for a couple reasons.

Well, I also wanna say that wildlife has intrinsic value, whether there are people in the world or not wildlife has value, even though this kind of what I’m working on is more about Wildlife’s value to people. It does not mean that I think it only wildlife should only have value to people for us to save it.

Right. I mean, it hasn intrinsic value, but of the research that we know we’ll take birds, cuz birds are a little bit easier to study. People’s reactions to birds and bird songs. So. Almost 47 million Americans engage in some sort of bird or observe birds in the United States and go on international trips every year, which is a, you know, billions of dollars to the economy and happiness wise, seeing backyard birds.

There’s evidence that it lowers stress and anxiety makes people feel happier. And that hearing bird songs, not even seeing them, just hearing their songs can help alleviate sort of mental stress and fatigue and increased happiness hormones, which is pretty, pretty awesome. Oh, and also there is something called empty forest syndrome where a protected area is protected, but it doesn’t have any big mammals left.

and that’s, you know, primarily because of poaching or trade or trafficking of these animals, but in the long run, they play important ecosystem roles. So that forest that’s protected eventually will suffer from not having the animals in it, but we need to have the kind of policies that we need to protect, not just the ecosystems, but the species.

Crystal: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think I’ve experienced the empty forest syndrome, myself being in wooded areas, but realizing how quiet they are. And if you don’t have the entire ecosystem, they can’t. Like seed dispersal of those trees of the protected forest that you mentioned, like that kind of thing is not gonna happen without all of the other parts.

All of the other animals necessary to make even just that one ecosystem service take place. Yeah, absolutely.

Beth: Mm-hmm .

Crystal: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So as you said, our personal wellbeing has been shown to increase with and in the presence of nature and wildlife, which is a huge value, but nature and wildlife tend to in our current economic system, looking at GDP and whatnot, they are only valued based on the money you can make off of them.

For example, despite the environmental and social devastation caused by hurricane Katrina, it actually had a positive impact on the us’ GDP. So on paper, it looked like a good thing. How does that happen? Because it it’s certainly not wellbeing. You know, like that kind of event is detrimental for people.

Beth: Yeah. And I think things like traffic accidents increased GDP because you have to pay for your car to get fixed. It, it, it, it circulates more money into the economy, not wellbeing. absolutely. And that, I think the way we currently measure things in society, not maybe individually, it, it puts an emphasis on the short term productivity of.

Of our society and it’s usually measured, you know, quarterly or however you can measure it annual, you know, but the things that matter to GDP are not at all the same things that matter to us as individuals or to our wellbeing. In fact, going back to your story about. Your connection with nature and, you know, seeing giraffes.

So if you think about like, how does our current system really support and promote that kind of experience? And I mean, yes, there are values from, from ecotourism, for sure. And then that’s a really important part of conservation. You know, a lot of people have shared. Stories like that, or like hearing a bird outside their window or seeing a dolphin from a boat or from the beach.

And in fact, in, in almost every case, if you look. This system, the tree where the bird is singing is worth more cut down and made into lumber than it is economically to have a bird outside your window. It may bring you infinite joy, but it does not count in the economy the time with your cat or dog isn’t valued either.

Unless you’re. It’s incidental to you working, you know, you can spend some time with your dad or dog while you’re producing for the economy, you know, and even the sort of seeing wildlife in its habitat, generally the habitat itself would have the most value to the economy. If it were turned into a shopping.

And that is kind of what we’re fighting against because we intuitively know that it’s not more valuable as a shopping mall than as a place for these rare and precious animals to run around. But there’s just no way to count it in currently. So like Katrina or. Elephants. I worked on trying to ban ivory in the us for a while and ivory, the parts of parts and pieces of wildlife are worth more than them being free and intact in their native.

He habitat and that’s one of the issues around addressing wildlife trade. You’ll never actually be able to stop the trade in a species. If you can’t address the underlying factors, we need to value that species alive too. I

Crystal: remember learning during COVID the camp that we had gone to was closed for a ludicrous amount of time, just thinking.

You know, ecotourism was so beneficial to the area, but there was no money coming in from ecotourism. And so did those animals not have value anymore? And what do the people do? What does the country do in that moment of time? To

Beth: me, that’s the underlying question of when we use these economic values to value.

Animals or habitat in many cases were undermining the values that may have existed in these communities before there was ecotourism or before there was kind of livelihood strategies, right. They, in many cases and we’re, we’re studying this, actually, we have a, a really amazing paper we’re working on with.

Cases from different communities where the wildlife that they’re trying to protect the conservation organization is trying to protect has some sort of cultural or spiritual value to the community, which is the reason, one of the main reasons they wanna protect it in the first place. Right? So we may have to develop livelihood strategies, but their underlying value is that they wanted to protect it.

And in many cases, conservation and other development, Organizations may come in and be like, well, you know, here’s how you can make more money from it. Here’s how you can, you know, kind of putting. A Western value system, let’s say on the community, which can be fine. They obviously have to, people have to live in a, in a world that is very based on economics at the moment, but if it undermines that traditional relationship.

With wildlife, then you take the money away because you can’t travel during COVID and what happens, right? I mean, is there still this underlying relationship or has it been replaced by this kind of economic value relationship? So it’s one of the questions I’ve been really interested in and, um, trying to figure out how we can really understand those deep values from, in communities where we work and support them.

While we’re making life obviously more comfortable at the same time. Yeah. So I’ll end that there great. Oh, actually no. Can I add one more thing? Of course. So about a month ago, the us government issued a draft plan for how to include values of nature in our economic measures. They’re looking at it sort of as a, a change in asset wealth is what they call it.

That would, that would be paired with GDP as a way to make decisions. This is huge. I mean, it still, it still boils down to sort of assignment of, of economic values to nature, but it’s a gigantic step and it’s part of, sort of a three pronged approach where they’re doing a nature assessment. How much is our.

Natural wealth in the us by not just exploitation and use values, but looking at broader values and, and focusing on nature based solutions to climate change, instead of necessarily focusing on the more technological solutions they wanna make sure that these nature based solutions are included in us policy.

So for me, I think that’s extremely positive.

Crystal: That is, is that part of the inflation reduction act

Beth: or is that no, it was announced on earth day. This year that we’re gonna do this. It was an executive order, but, but now it’s actually coming to sort of how to operationalize these ideas and it’s, it’s just, I’m just so excited by it.

I’m such a, such a policy goof, but I thought, I think it’s so interesting and we’re kinda getting comments together and trying to figure out, you know, specifically how to include the wildlife piece, which is mentioned in the plan. Wouldn’t be addressed till 20, 29. And you know, my feeling is, uh, we have a lot of urgency around that wildlife piece, so let’s move it up 20, 20

Crystal: time.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. That’s for sure. For sure. So you said we, so let’s bring this back to your organization. One nature, you are bringing wellbeing metrics. One step further. And it’s by including wildlife. Please. Tell me more about that.

Beth: Thank you for asking I, yes. I mean, there’s, there’s really two goals of the work that I’m doing at one nature’s doing, which is to try to see and measure and, and raise awareness around the connection between wildlife and human wellbeing.

So the first is because these wellbeing metrics that are out. Wildlife is not explicitly included in many of them. And so we end up with the empty forest syndrome and all these other things we already talked about. Right. And also I. Have seen through my 25 years of experience in conservation and development, that the wellbeing of communities is not always prioritized in conservation, coming conservation started with wanting to protect animals and habitat from exploitation.

And so it almost came about with an anti community. Approach in some cases, you know, it’s like we’re gonna protect these things. And ideally we’ll separate the community from them like we did with national parks in the us. Right. So we can better protect them, but through the decades and through the last couple hundred years, right.

People have realized you can’t really do that. Communities are vital to this, but I feel like there’s still an approach of kind of putting external values on the community instead of understanding their wellbeing, why they wanna protect these things in a really clear and systematic way, measuring.

Wellbeing as an indicator of project success, you know, it’s not just your biological indicators, is the community better off than they were before you started? Do they perceive that they’re better off? So that’s part of it. So our first priority is to understand the, the wildlife and wellbeing connection in communities to measure it, to have tools for our partners who, who wanna do.

And then to take that what we’ve learned and roll it up, you know, instead of having top down, like, okay, this is what wellbeing is. This is what it means. This is what, you know, this is the experience that people are having on the ground, how they value wildlife, how can we roll those values up? And so that these communities aren’t the exception to the rule, but they make the rules.

Right. They’re the ones that we wanna follow and, and understand because they’re the ones having the most immediate experience with wildlife in many cases, and then make policies that support that, that kind of an approach. Can you give me an

Crystal: example of this work?

Beth: Yes. So we have a partner that we’re working with on a carbon credit project, and it’s basically.

A non monetized community in Africa that is they’re very remote. They have kind of a more traditional lifestyle now than. Than many other places in the world. Right. But this carbon credit project is a way to provide protection for the ecosystem and that the wildlife in it, and for this community to get some benefits from protecting this ecosystem, but it can be dangerous, I think, or we need to be careful to flood communities with cash.

that have maybe very well established. Social networks, you know, and, and maybe more equity and maybe more clear. Cultural and spiritual practices related to their, their ecosystem and their animals and their wildlife. So the carbon Verifi is requiring that wellbeing be measured and that hopefully that it be increased, the wellbeing of communities increased, but there’s, there’s just, aren’t very good tools out there to do that.

And so we have this wellbeing perception survey, how people feel about their lives, how. Um, how they feel the wildlife impacts their lives in all of these different areas of wellbeing that have been well researched in the wellbeing community, but, but they’re different from the kind of typical goals of the conservation community.

So it kind of merges the best in their conservation experience with kind of best available practice in wellbeing to get this baseline, and then be able to see two years in how has the wellbeing of this community shifted and. Is it in ways we understand. So

Crystal: the example that you’re using is a rural community in Africa.

Might this idea be more difficult or less relevant in nations or even just communities that are so disconnected from nature?

Beth: Uh, Yeah, I’ve struggled with that a little bit. And I think that is the perception, right. That we are disconnected, but like we talked about everyone does have these stories. So what I hope to do is be able to use the experiences we’re having in these, you know, kind of maybe rural.

More traditional indigenous communities to inform what some of these values are that we can then better support and developed countries. But I also think that everybody has a story of connection. We’ve maybe. Gone a little bit astray from that connection for a while, but it’s still there. It’s just that maybe we don’t experience it in our everyday lives.

The way that we used to have to do, if we, if we were relying on the forest for everything, for example, or the ocean for our survival. So. I think that we can highlight these types of stories from them, but not, not, not feel that it it’s only other people that can have this. I think that Twitter studies were excellent example, right?

So we’re super unhappy. We go to a park and feel better. So I. I think that there are very tangible things that we can do and that in our policies, we can acknowledge that we are all connected and give city dwellers or or community members this access and, and prioritize it.

Crystal: And what are some things that the listener can do to increase their wellbeing or become more connected with nature?

Beth: That is also a great question because yeah. What, what can we do sitting here in me, in my home office, in Washington, DC? What can I do? And. You know, there are a couple things, one yes. Connect with nature near you. If you need a prescription, they write nature prescriptions in the UK. Now, for example, because people who are feeling unwell, they, the doctors are like, oh, get some nature.

so that helps. And then notice what makes you happy? And do more of it generally, not just with nature generally. And, and then I think I would like people to notice the disconnect between the experiences that are making them happy and the things that are kind of rewarded maybe in the outside world, just to see it in for themselves.

Cuz it’s something you probably need to experience to really become really active on this kind of shift towards well. Happy people buy less stuff and buying less stuff makes you happier. Like there’s research around that people who are connected to nature have increased wellbeing and an increased desire to protect the earth.

Right? So it’s like a cycle of great things happening. People who are emotionally connected to animals are much less likely to exploit them to involve in any kind of animal cruelty, but especially, you know, wildlife trade. And you, you think twice before you buy. Whatever piece of ivory. Well, most people aren’t buying pieces of ivory, but even the kind of other wildlife products out there, people who are connected and feel empathy with other people, which is a huge determin of wellbeing are happier.

And they’re more concerned about the happiness and wellbeing of others. So just getting out of our own isolation and really connecting with people has a huge, huge impact on happiness, but also on the world. Right. And then finally, so one of the things we researched was that happy people feel more empowered to act.

And to take action and taking action makes you happier. so it’s like, you know, all these things that can feed into your happiness that just spiral up, you know? So those are some of the things that we recommend that people think about and just pick one to start with, and then you’ll be so happy. You’ll do all the other things too.

Right?

Crystal: Absolutely. And I mean, Even if you’re in a city like mine, you can find nature. I mean, there are birds everywhere and you could just go catch a beautiful sunset too. Yes. Do something beauty. Isn’t

Beth: on those lines. Yeah. Beauty. Isn’t always often discussed, but there’s a, a person that I have worked with John Degraf and his emphasis is.

Beauty that beauty is so linked to happiness and that just getting out and seeing beauty. It it’s something that is universal. Like everybody responds to, to beauty. So that’s a great point.

Crystal: Yeah. I believe that to be true. If you see the beauty in the world, of course you’ll wanna protect it. Beth, thank you for joining me today and thank you for all that you do.

You’re making a difference.

Beth: Aw, thank you. You too. Thank you.

The

Crystal: way our current economic system is. With GDP measurements and whatnot, nature and wildlife are only really valued in how you can make money off of them. So it doesn’t necessarily matter if the forests you hike on the weekends, rejuvenates you because its value may only be measured in its timber.

This is unfortunate for us and a threat for conservation, but the tools and policies that Beth is working on can help safeguard what really matters wellbeing for all beings. Don’t forget to go to forces for nature.com and sign up to receive emailed show notes, action tips, and a free checklist to help you start taking practical actions today.

Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode? I would be so grateful if you would share it with them. Hit me up on Instagram at Facebook, at becoming forces for nature. And let me know what actions you have been taking. Adopting. Just one habit can be a game changer because imagine a a million people also adopted that.

What difference for the world? Are you going to make today?