Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global

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Kieft, J.; Bendell, J (2021). "The responsibility of communicating difficult truths about climate influenced societal disruption and collapse: an introduction to psychological research". Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) Occasional Papers. 7: 1–39. Groat, L., ed. (1995). Giving places meaning: Readings in environmental psychology. San Diego: Academic Press. Nach der Natur – Das Artensterben und die moderne Kultur [After Nature: Species Extinction and Modern Culture] (2010)

But there was something odd - or at least incomplete - about all this. Environmentalism is a modern movement, a product of cosmopolitan modernity. The crisis that is its raison d'etre is definitively global and is perceptible only by means of long perspectives achieved by scientific measuring, comparing and forecasting. A local field of perception would scarcely make us aware of the crisis at all; certainly we would be unable to understand it. Iconic images from all over the globe have nourished popular environmentalism.Bloom, W. (1990). Personal identity, national identity and international relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heise begins to do this, and, more broadly, to explore various ways in which the global scale of the ecological crisis is being imagined and represented. The book is an excellent introduction to this principle of "eco-cosmopolitanism". Succinct and judicious commentaries on a range of theories of globalisation and cosmopolitanism are followed by critical readings of a wide variety of texts, including images of the planet, science fiction, art installations, experimental cinema, new types of toys for children, and magic-realist, paranoid and realist fiction. She looks at systems theory and risk theory as producing new accounts of long-distance ecological and political relationships, and especially at the conception of the globe as a web or network. The popular web facility Google Earth is a suggestive example of a new kind of rapid perceptual switching between the global and the local: zooming in and zooming out. Spretnak, C. (1997). The resurgence of the real: Body, nature and place in a hypermodern world. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishers. ISBN 9780201534191. Altman, I.; Low, S.M., eds. (1992). Place attachment. Human behavior and environment: Advances in theory and research. New York: Plenum Press. Rahman, S. “Karachi, Turtles, and the Materiality of Place: Pakistani Eco Cosmopolitanism in Uzma Aslam Khan’s Trespassing.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 18, no. 2, 2011, pp. 261–282., doi:10.1093/isle/isr040.

Davis, Mike (1990). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Vintage Press, Penquin Books. ISBN 9780679738060.Sense of place can potentially provide positive solutions for both human well-being and biodiversity conservation. While sense of place provides a variety of benefits to people in various contexts ( Table 1), the economic value of sense of place is usually neglected. Experiencing biodiversity is also an essential component of sense of place and human well-being that needs to be further explored in future studies. Biodiversity loss (for example the loss of iconic species like rhinoceros or elephant; Di Minin et al. Reference Di Minin, Laitila, Montesino Pouzols, Leader-Williams, Slotow, Conway, Goodman and Moilanen2015) may have negative effects on sense of place, related to changes in environmental qualities and the physical characteristics of places, and loss of peoples’ identity, attachment and the meanings attributed to places. At the same time, the ‘construction’ of a sense of place could sometimes result in an increase in human disturbance and in enhanced threats to biodiversity (via habitat transformation or species introduction). Providing a sense of place experience (through recreation) should have a minimum impact on natural ecosystems. Globally, habitat transformation is causing unprecedented loss of biodiversity (Butchart et al. Reference Butchart, Walpole, Collen, van Strien, Scharlemann, Almond, Baillie, Bomhard, Brown and Bruno2010). In turn, this affects ecosystem functioning and stability, the flow of ecosystem services and human well-being (Foley et al. Reference Foley, DeFries, Asner, Barford, Bonan, Carpenter, Chapin, Coe, Daily, Gibbs, Helkowski, Holloway, Howard, Kucharik, Monfreda, Patz, Prentice, Ramankutty and Snyder2005; Cardinale et al. Reference Cardinale, Duffy, Gonzalez, Hooper, Perrings, Venail, Narwani, Mace, Tilman and Wardle2012). Conflicts between biodiversity conservation and human development needs, which are driving habitat transformation and biodiversity loss, are difficult to resolve (Chan et al. Reference Chan, Pringle, Ranganathan, Boggs, Chan, Ehrlich, Haff, Heller, Al-khafaji and Macmynowski2007). Measham TG (2006) Learning about environments: The significance of primal landscapes, Environmental Management 38(3), pp. 426–434

Some people were, nonetheless, emotionally responsive to the natural world, but it was most likely to be nature as spectacle - as landscape or as a contrived encounter with wildlife - that moved them, rather than nature as an ecological process in which they felt themselves to be embedded. What was needed was a reconnection with local place that would not be confined to the demarcated space of leisure. Such a reconnection would demand that one's actions be accountable to one's deep knowledge of the ecological interactions that constitute place. This was the way to better ecological awareness and responsible behaviour, for only through such feeling for one's surroundings could ecological processes register on the physical senses. That was the theory. Heise, Ursula K. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. Rahman, Shazia. Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism: Pakistani Women’s Literary and Cinematic Fictions. University of Nebraska Press, 2019. In urban planning, the development of a green infrastructure fosters psychological well-being by providing daily access to natural settings and sense of place (Maller et al. Reference Maller, Townsend, Pryor, Brown and St Leger2006; Tzoulas et al. Reference Tzoulas, Korpela, Venn, Yli-Pelkonen, Kaźmierczak, Niemela and James2007; Bendt et al. Reference Bendt, Barthel and Colding2013), while ensuring a range of ecosystem services in urban areas (such as air filtration, microclimate regulation, and noise reduction; Gaston et al. Reference Gaston, Ávila-Jiménez and Edmondson2013). Urban green spaces may enhance biodiversity through the promotion of ecological corridors and habitat connectivity (Rudd et al. Reference Rudd, Vala and Schaefer2002), as well as providing a refuge for native biodiversity (Goddard et al. Reference Goddard, Dougill and Benton2010). Psychological benefits of green spaces increase with species richness (Fuller et al. Reference Fuller, Irvine, Devine-Wright, Warren and Gaston2007). Management strategies enhancing biological diversity (such as mosaics of habitat patches; Thwaites et al. Reference Thwaites, Helleur and Simkins2005) and sense of place experiences in urban green space, could contribute to both human well-being and biodiversity conservation ( Fig. 1).Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press. A sense of place comes from a feeling of connectedness, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual, to a specific geographic area (Relph 1976). Developing a sense of place through geographic experiences helps build the social and emotional foundation children need and will one day use as adults. What is sense of place APHG?