Being here: Biodiversity and human health, again

Nature is good for humans in a multitude of ways, thanks to biodiversity and its ecosystem services. Of course, nature still causes inner and outer suffering, but in general, and in advanced societies, biodiversity is good from the point of view of subjective and objective human well-being and health. There is growing evidence that nature is no longer a sorry constraint and an unknown that blocks the enlightened purposes of humans.

Ontologically speaking, human arrangements are extending deeper into the “wild”. For instance, a multitude of varieties of REDD+ schemes are being put into practice in different locations on Earth and new ways to identify, map, value and incorporate ecosystem services in resource and land use planning are already routine. Perhaps paradoxically, the days are forgotten when complexity and chaos theories complicated and challenged rational and deliberative planning and decision-making about natural assets, so strong is the optimism about the concept of ecosystem services.

But the “wild" does not stay out there beyond the boundaries of convenience. Under close examination, ecosystem services are not just benefits that flow from the environment to humans. Ecosystems and their services are part of human life, i.e. human life is constituted and sustained by the functional consequences of biodiversity. John Dewey was  already well aware of this. In Human Nature and Conduct, he writes about habits (1988, 14):

"…habits may be profitably compared to physiological functions, like breathing, digesting. The latter are, to be sure, involuntary, while habits are acquired. But important as is this difference for many purposes it should not conceal the fact that habits are like functions in many respects, and especially in requiring the cooperation of organism and environment. Breathing is an affair of the air as truly as of the lungs; digesting an affair of food as truly as of tissues of stomach."

Dewey’s insight was scientifically validated by Hanski et al. (2012), as they found that a decrease in the diversity and quantity of microbial exposure makes our immune system overreact to harmless targets such as our own tissues and allergens. It is now warranted knowledge that ecosystem services happen inside and outside the human body. Disturbances in the delivery of the functional consequences of ecosystems are not only problematic “out there” but “in here” as well. This is important. An increase in environmental pollutants and increased exposure to both those and non-diverse nature have harmful effects on the human immune system.

Diverse nature is good for humans. But it is a tricky question for a modern human as to where this nature is and how to get in contact with it. It is laborious and consumes time and effort to go to nature: people are connected with each other and technologies, but not with nature. We must recall that our backyards are right there in nature, and with their tongues, fur and feet, our pets bring nature inside our houses. As recent studies show, contact with house pets is good for the humans: not only do they contaminate us with positive emotions and motivation to move but also with micro-biota that reduce the risk of childhood asthma (Fall et al. 2015).

During the past few years, understanding of the functional role of biodiversity in ecological assemblages, immune defence systems and pollutant degradation has grown, experiment by experiment and publication by publication. Concrete policy advice is still thin. But the fact is that new findings about the interrelations between environmental variables and human health, particularly risks of autoimmune and immune-mediated diseases, helps planners and policy makers to see new problems but also new opportunities.

These opportunities are not without their implications. And these implications are the field of research for the pragmatically orientated ecological economics for the decades to come. Let me give in some broad brushstrokes a few implications that are ahead of us.

Habits are environmentally constituted. People just do not have habits: people are their habits. As we all know, habit-breaking is not just a matter of getting the correct information about the health impacts of, say, your consumption patterns or monotonous nature. Yes, of course, dramatic pictures may be highly disturbing, but images very seldom change your beliefs or the ways you act - they may change your attitudes, though.

Habit change takes a modification in your action environment. These modifications do not have to be large, but they need be to concrete - and often physical. Otherwise, the existence of new information or persuasion would do the deed. Living environments need to be modified so that the health effects of biodiversity permeate the human skin and membranes and, equally importantly, habits of feeling, acting and thinking: biodiversity needs to become part of us.

This is a challenge, because societies are organised for precisely the opposite purpose: to keep nature out and provide safe and well-planned access points to nature. But, as I have indicated above, new findings about the interdependence of biodiversity and human health will ultimately change how we plan our land use, design our houses and organise our everyday lives. Grasping these problems and designing solutions are still well beyond current scientific and policy understanding. Transdisciplinary - i.e. revolutionary, creative and experimental - advice for, say, city planning, child day-care and food processing is needed.

The list of emerging themes is much longer. But these examples suffice here. Biodiversity and health is the question of our time. There is no longer any reason to cherish what the late German social scientist Ulrich Beck called “the century error” and “organised irresponsibility”. It is not enough to take human purpose out into the wild and design ever more complex schemes for paying for ecosystem services. The wild needs to be brought inside the human domain (Hiedanpää et al. 2011).

Understanding this as an ontological necessity will help us to focus on the practical implications of changing habits of feeling, acting and thinking. Not only will an enormous sum of money be saved because of the increased well-being and prevention of autoimmune and related diseases in particular, but, more generally, being habituated to live with biodiversity and ecosystem services would put an end to organised irresponsibility and the century error: we must cherish what is part of us. This changes everything.

Juha Hiedanpää, ESEE (European Society for Ecological Economics), Newsletter, Hot Topic, Winter 2015 (http://www.euroecolecon.org/newsletter/)

References

Dewey, J. 1988. Human Nature and Conduct. The Middle Works, 1899–1924: Vol 14. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Fall, T., Lundholm, C., Örtqvist, A.K., Fall, K., Fang; F., Hedhammar, Å., Kämpe, O., Ingelsson, E. & Almqvist; C. 2015. Early exposure to dogs and farm animals and the risk of childhood asthma. JAMA Pediatr 169(11):e153219. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.3219.

Hanski I., von Hertzen L., Fyhrquistc N. et al. 2012. Environmental biodiversity, human microbiota, and allergy are interrelated. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109: 8334–9.

Hiedanpää, J., Kotilainen, J. & Salo, M. 2011. Unfolding the organised irresponsibility: Ecosystem approach and the quest for forest biodiversity in Finland, Peru, and Russia. Forest Policy Econ 13: 159–165.

Under the skin: Ecosystem services, habits and human health

The Finnish Cultural Foundation has an Argumenta funding mechanism. The purpose of it is to stimulate dialogue between scientific communities on those matters that might have high scientific and societal potential but whose scientific and societal significance has not yet been thoroughly understood.

“Ecosystem services and human health” is one of the most recent Argumenta projects. The project aims to (i) identify the linkages between ecosystem services and human health, (ii) create new multidisciplinary approaches to study ecosystem services and human health and well-being, and (iii) to help implement scientific results and insights into the practices of urban planning and decision making in natural resource management.

Some twenty years ago ecosystem heath was a proposed metaphor for environmental management and biodiversity policy. A healthy ecosystem is resistant, resilient and adaptable. The idea was then, and still is now, that biodiversity and its healthy functioning support human wellbeing and health. Perhaps because of its anthropogenic flavor, the metaphor was swiftly replaced by that of ecosystem resilience.

But the important message was, and still is, that the functional consequences of biodiversity matter. These functional consequences have been conceptualized in many ways. They have been called supporting and regulating ecosystem services and primary ecological values.

Function is the causal antecedent to the end (Deacon 2012, 38-39). Therefore, equally importantly, the functional consequences of biodiversity extend to people and their wellbeing and health. Human communities and societies built their livelihoods and wellbeing on ecosystem functioning. The ends are co-constitutive. This is exactly why the conception social-ecological is used in ecological economics.

The human significance of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning extends beyond cultural and provisioning ecosystem services. Of course recreational opportunities, beautiful landscapes, medical plants and the edible goods from ecosystems are important in creating and sustaining human wellbeing.

But biodiversity has functional consequences that contribute even more thoroughly to the human social-ecological capacity for resistance, resilience and adaptability in the face of environmental changes. The argument of the Argumenta Project Ecosystem services and human health is to communicate to a wider scientific community, policy-makers and the public the idea of human health as an ecosystem service.

A co-leader of the Argumenta project, Professor Liisa Tyrväinen, suggests that even short-term - 20 minute - visits to nature areas have positive effects on perceived stress relief compared to the built-up environment. Tyrväinen et al (2014, 8) conclude their study:

“… the managed urban parks with old trees and natural views and the urban woodland were perceived as more coherent and were better environments for restoration and for having feelings of vitality and creativity. The results of our experiment suggest that the large urban parks (more than 5 ha) and large urban woodlands have positive well-being effects on urban inhabitants, and in particular for healthy middle-aged women. The results suggest that spending time in urban green areas after work has stress-reducing effects. This means that urban parks and woodlands should be easily accessible for residents.”

It is important that citizens have an access to nature. The urban planning of cities and the planning of everyday life on the individual level should, according to the most recent findings (see references in Tyrväinen et al 2014) provide a diverse set of entry points into nature.

But besides this “possibility to visit nature” -aspect there is another and even more crucial aspect to the health effects of biodiversity. According to recent research conducted on both the Finnish and Russian side of Karelia, people should not only have entry points to visit nature, but should in a habitual manner transact with biodiversity as part of their everyday life.

Professor Ilkka Hanski and his colleagues (2012) found out that in the Karelia area, northeastern Finland, biodiversity, human skin microbiome, and atopic allergy are interrelated. One of the authors, Professor Tari Haahtela, (2014, 21) explains the meaning of the results:

“More and more people around the world are living in cities and experiencing little contact with nature. Environmental microorganisms, especially commensals, previously ubiquitous and abundantly present, for example, in drinking water and milk, are key players for the induction and maintenance of immunoregulatory circuits and tolerance. Adaptation to modern urban life is a challenge to immune development and mismatched immunologic mechanisms lead to symptoms and disease. Contact with natural environments rich in species seems to be strongly related to immunotolerance via the presence of beneficial protective microbes of the skin, gut, and airways. These microbes create a living interface between human body and the environment and extend deeper in the tissue than known before.”

He (2014, 22) continues:

“Humans have evolved with microorganisms, which may not only comprise bacteria and fungi, but also viruses and microscopic protozoans, although hardly any data on the latter are available. Human commensals are no longer considered as passive bystanders or transient passengers, but increasingly as active and essential participants in the development and maintenance of barrier function and immunologic tolerance.”

“Inflammation is a cardinal feature of asthma and allergic diseases, autoimmune diseases, and many forms of cancer, but more recently, less tangible associations have been linked to these trends such as an increased incidence of obesity and depression with inflammatory markers... Also autism and Alzheimer disease have been associated with microbial deprivation.”

And (2014, 23) concludes:

“Population growth (urbanization) leads to loss of biodiversity (poor macrobiota/microbiota), poor human microbiota (dysbiosis), immune dysfunction (poor tolerance), inappropriate inflammatory responses, and finally symptoms and clinical disease… The interplay of environmental genome (macrobiome), human microbial genome (microbiome), and human genome determines health and diseases. It is time to revisit the allergy paradigm and consider new kind of actions to combat the burden.”

Seen from this perspective, ecosystem services are not benefits that flow from the environment to humans. Ecosystems and their services are part of human life, i.e. human life is constituted and sustained by the functional consequences of biodiversity. Ecosystem services happen inside and outside the human body. According to the findings of Hanski and Haahtela, ecosystem services happen in the human microbial genome, in the microbiome, on the skin and in mucous membranes.

Healthy human life is constituted by transactions with biodiversity and nature. This is a true extension to the meaning of the concept of ecosystem services.

The question is how to modify habits and living environments in such a way that human contact with nature becomes constant and diverse. Indeed, this is a matter of individual reflection and self-creation but equally importantly it is a matter of land use planning and environmental policy. The question is then how to bring agricultural action-oriented countryside into the everyday life of urban city dwellers, and how to nudge the habits of feeling and mind of urban city dwellers to consider that kind of living is worthwhile to test and experiment with.

To produce multidisciplinary knowledge, support transdisciplinary experiments and provide real-life political advice on ecosystem services and human health is one of the key tasks of ecological economics in the decades to come.


Juha Hiedanpää, ESEE (European Society for Ecological Economics), Newsletter, Hot Topic, Summer 2014.


References

Deacon. T. 2012. Incomplete nature: How mind emerged from matter. W.W. Norton & Company: New York.

Haahtela T. What is needed for allergic children? Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2014: 25: 21–24.

Hanski I., von Hertzen L., Fyhrquistc N. et al. (2012) Environmental biodiversity, human microbiota, and allergy are interrelated. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2012: 109: 8334–9.

Tyrväinen, L., Ojala, A., Korpela, K., Lanki, T., Tsunetsugud, Y., Kagawa, T. (2014) The influence of urban green environments on stress relief measures: A field experiment. Journal of Environmental Psychology 38: 1–9.