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(THE VERSION) Many people think of New Years resolutions and brainstorm ways to improve for the next year. What if those resolutions could also benefit our communities, society, and the planet?
Although it might not be the most common approach, it can help you to see other ways you can be of service to others.
These are four top New Year’s resolutions that you can use to improve your relationship and connection with nature in 2022.
Pay more attention to how your actions affect the environment
Each person has an environmental ethics that describes how they value, manage and ultimately relate nature. This relationship can be improved in many ways by balancing the nature-human reciprocity. Our addiction to single-use plastics, which pile up in landfills, or our dependence on fossil fuels that heat the planet, is a bad relationship with nature.
In 2022, each of us can take more responsibility for our actions that contribute to environmental degradation. We can also encourage businesses and governments to make it easier for people of different socioeconomic backgrounds to protect our environment. This includes making it affordable for recycled goods and making reliable public transportation available.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has many resources that will help you reduce waste at work, home, in your community, and during holidays. The website offers tips such as turning off or unplugging lights throughout the day, reusing packaging material, and using online billing instead of paper mail.
You can also lose the burden of social injustice that harms nature.
Social injustice can have a negative impact on many aspects of society. Inequality or racism can lead directly to health disparities. They also have negative consequences for the natural world.
A recent study found that redlining and residential separation lead to unequal access, pollution, and loss of biodiversity. These practices resulted in the creation of highways, industries, and other activities that can harm environmental quality in marginalized areas. They also made it harder for people to find parks and trees that provide cooling during summer and are beneficial for the planet.
Perpetuating social ills, such as systemic racism and inequitable allocation of resources, is detrimental to the environment and marginalized people, as well as society as a total.
You can help turn this around by speaking out in your local community. Join groups that promote environmental protection and social justice, and bring nature back to your community. Call your state, city, and congressional leaders to urge them take action. For concrete ways to make diversity initiatives work in your workplace, see the Green 2.0 reports section.
Learn about nature and how you can reduce harm to the environment.
Although clean air, water, and soil are essential for our survival, research shows that many people lack basic environmental literacy and health literacy to protect themselves.
Learn more about your impact on the environment in 2022. Learn more to learn how you can preserve the integrity and beauty of your local natural resources. Find out how you can keep up to date with local land-use decisions that affect the environment and your community.
Local educators can also be supported and encouraged by you to integrate the environment into your lessons. Many other subjects are interrelated with environmental issues, including history and health. This website provides a framework for educators to help students improve their environmental literacy.
Staying connected with media that discuss current research can help increase awareness. You can also tie environmental facts and knowledge to your game night or team-building activities.
Spend more time with family members and friends in nature
Studies have shown that spending time outdoors, including in urban green spaces can improve your relationship to nature and others.
Spending time in nature can improve social cohesion. Many people discovered that the outdoors was a great place to relax and reduce stress in the wake of the pandemic. Spending more time outdoors can increase social interaction that benefits health, buffer emotional distress, encourages use of these spaces, and can help them to be better prepared for the future.
These tools will help you to improve parks and recreation close to your home. These are also ways to make outdoor environments more inclusive of families from diverse communities.
Collectively, we can be better stewards for the planet by thinking about our relationship to nature and finding ways that we can protect it.
[Too busy to read another daily email? Get one of The Conversations curated weekly newsletters.]This article is republished under Creative Commons license from The Conversation. The original article can be found here. https://theconversation.com/4-new-years-resolutions-for-a-healthier-environment-in-2022-172277.
