Climate change's overlooked casualty: our experiences with nature
The extinction of experience due to climate change and what we can do about it.
“Ongoing climate change has the potential to reduce people’s direct experiences with nature, leading to or further exacerbating the ‘extinction of experience’.”
— Soga and Gaston (2024)
Have you noticed fewer children playing outside during summer afternoons? When was the last time you changed your hiking plans because of extreme heat or unpredictable weather? Do you find yourself checking air quality apps before deciding whether to go for a run?
These questions point to an emerging area of research that examines not just how climate change affects biodiversity, but how it might be transforming our very relationship with the natural world. A thought-provoking perspective piece1 by Masashi Soga and Kevin J. Gaston explores this concept—what they call the "extinction of experience". They suggest changing climate could be altering our opportunities to connect with nature.
This extinction of experience refers to the progressive loss of direct, sensory interactions between people and the natural world. It's the gradual vanishing of firsthand encounters with plants, animals, and natural environments that shape our personal connection to nature—a disappearance not just of species themselves, but of our lived experiences with them. And the most concerning thing? It’s becoming particularly pronounced in children.
These diminished experiences with the natural world have the potential to impose a wide range of impacts on people’s health and wellbeing, while simultaneously eroding the foundations of pro-environmental behaviour. As I’ve pointed out previously, when people lose their connection to nature, both humans and nature suffer because we are less equipped to deal with the very environmental challenges that initiated the separation.
Three pathways to the extinction of experience
The complex socio-ecological impacts of climate change can diminish people’s capability, opportunity and motivation to experience nature according to the authors. First, it reduces our capability to engage with nature as extreme temperatures or weather events directly impact our physical and mental health, making outdoor activities more challenging.
Second, it diminishes our opportunities for experiences with nature by creating mismatches between wildlife rhythms and human activity schedules. Plants flower at different times, animals shift their ranges or activity periods, and we change our outdoor routines to avoid extreme conditions, creating mismatches between when nature is most vibrant and when we're available to experience it. For instance, the figure below shows an example where altered timing of snowmelt led to an approximately 25% reduction in visitors getting to see wildflower displays in Mount Rainier National Park.
Third, climate change undermines our motivation to connect with nature through increased concerns about discomfort, health risks from heat exposure, and potential encounters with harmful species that thrive in warmer conditions such as disease vectors (e.g. mosquitoes).
What makes this situation particularly concerning is the potential for a negative feedback loop. Climate change reduces our nature experiences through one or all of the three pathways described above, which can result in reduced environmental concern and pro-environmental behaviours. These include the very actions needed to address climate change, like reduced meat consumption.
A nasty negative feedback loop is possible: less nature experience → less pro-environmental behaviour → worsening climate change → even less nature experience
Are the effects evenly distributed among socioeconomic groups?
Socioeconomic circumstances will no doubt play a role in the extent of people’s extinction of experience. Those with lower incomes typically live in areas more prone to natural disasters and with fewer green spaces. So this feedback loop won’t affect all communities equally. Those that are most vulnerable to climate impacts, including such lower socioeconomic groups, children, older adults, and marginalised groups, may experience a more severe extinction of experience. This creates a worrying disparity where those who could benefit most from nature connections may have the fewest opportunities to maintain them, potentially widening existing health and wellbeing gaps.
What can we do other than stop climate change?
Obviously, the most effective way to limit the extinction of experience is to limit climate change itself. Besides that, however, several possible interventions are possible, as outlined by Soga and Gaston:
1. Increase access to nature through green space design (opportunity)
Creating and maintaining accessible green spaces, particularly with shaded paths and shelters, will help to get people out in nature, even in hotter climates.
2. Protect common local species to sustain familiar experiences with nature (opportunity)
Prioritising the protection of common flora and fauna, which may be more resilient to climate change, supports people's everyday encounters with nature. These species play a crucial role in maintaining individuals’ direct sensory interactions with nature.
3. Foster capability and motivation through education and engagement
Recreational and educational programs that teach people how to identify species and observe natural changes can increase their enthusiasm for engaging with nature (and potentially their future pro-environmental behaviour).
4. Manage green spaces to reduce perceived risks (motivation)
Reducing the presence of potentially dangerous organisms like mosquitoes in green areas can help alleviate safety concerns, making people more likely to spend time outdoors.
Conclusions
While many factors contribute to our diminishing outdoor engagement, climate change may be accelerating this disconnection in ways we're only beginning to understand. It's not just biodiversity that's at risk—it's our relationship with the natural world itself.
Maintaining our connection to nature, despite the challenges associated with doing so, is fundamental to both our individual health and the health of the environment.
Two things are particularly concerning for me: First, that children are at the centre of these lost connections. Children’s home ranges are already reducing every generation due to increased awareness of safety concerns. This is completely understandable and something we grapple with as parents every day. But this reduced home range is taking the average kid increasingly away from nature. And these interactions are expected to decline further with climate change. Second, the dangerous negative feedback loop I discussed between climate change and reduced connections that needs to be kept in check (less experience → less environmental concern → worse climate impacts).
But, as noted, there are things we can do! And being aware of the issue is a good start.
What are your experiences in this space? What are your strategies? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Related reading:
Full reference:
Soga, M., and K. J. Gaston. 2024. Extinction of experience due to climate change. Nature Climate Change 14:108–110. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01920-0
I am part of a group that advocates for residents, businesses, and government organizations in our community to use native plants to create habitat gardens throughout the city. We do outreach, give away seeds, host habitat garden tours, and get people and organizations to work toward certifying their bit of dirt--from planters on a porch, to a corner of a yard, to landscaping for businesses, to city parks--as wildlife habitats with the National Wildlife Federation.
First, many gardeners start with a plant or two in a pot and gain momentum from there. If we can get them started, many will build momentum. Using what resources we each have, ranging from a pot on a stoop to acres of land, planting for habitat where one is every day means that we get to interact with nature--flora AND the fauna that come along because of that flora--every day.
Interacting with nature does not need to mean something grand or pristine or removed from the grind of daily life. The only way to get new people on board is to, quite literally, meet them where they are and encourage and enable them to take the very next step. And once they are started, momentum can build.
Thank you for introducing this research.
I was contemplating how we may shift activities to the evening and nighttime, if days will become too hot. What I didn't think about is that this will limit our experiences in nature, because no one is going to enjoy a walk in the woods at 10pm. Now I clearly see this as a consequence