With the rapidly developing climate change and the increase in climate disasters newsrooms now have special climate change reporters and sometimes even Climate Desks. How did the media report about nature before it became a problem for humanity? In the online course Ecosystem Therapy organised by the Institute for Nature Education and Sustainability (IVN) in The Netherlands, participants get an overview of how the relationship between human beings and nature has changed over the years.
Changing relationship between humans and nature
In the Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, human cultures transitioned from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to agriculture and settlement. It resulted in a worldwide change in how humans view themselves and how they look at nature and animals. It resulted in the domestication of crops and deciding which crops were best for humans to eat and grains as the dominant food source. The domestication of wild animals and having pets at home. Even though we started to live with animals in one space, the distance grew between us. We started to see animals as products. The changes in landscapes and ecosystems because of agriculture. We needed land to grow crops on and started to cut trees to create more of it. The changing vegetation was because animals needed food and not all plants were useful. It is called a revolution because of the major shifts in the way humans live. Agriculture created stocks, stocks needed protection in villages, and the land was owned and managed instead of travelled as the nomads had done. The roots of our current consumer society lie here, including the formation of waste.
People then migrated to the cities with Jericho in Palestine as the first settlement (8000 BC). Cities were dependent on the rural areas where the food came from and there were lots of rituals and offerings to thank nature for what it gave us. In seventeenth-century London, animals walked through the streets, and there were squares where bread, fish and corn was sold. This changed during the Industrial Revolution with the construction of railways and the transport of animals.
Colonisers saw nature as an instrument
The colonisers brought industrial developments to the colonies, exterminating over 80% of the native and indigenous people and their knowledge and culture. Amitav Ghosh writes in The Nutmeg’s Curse how in Europe at that time the witch hunt was going on. Single women who knew a lot about herbs and plant medicine and who had close relationships with nature were seen as dangerous, in the context of Christianity. Ghosh writes how colonisers recognized the same devilish wisdom among indigenous people and killed them for the same reasons. Nature is viewed by colonisers as an instrument to extract from.
And we still treat nature that way. We extract rare earth minerals for our mobile phones and build dams to control the water. We are living in the Anthropocene and see the direct effects of our human activity on the planet. Philosophers say it’s a relational problem and we need to fix it. We have evolved as rulers of nature instead of partners or participants. We have become detached from it. Australian philosopher and climate change activist Glenn Albrecht introduced the idea of Symbiocene, in which “all humans are stimulated to create a future where positive Earth emotions will prevail over the negative”.
Solutions Journalism
It’s worth looking at the roots of journalism and how the relationship with nature has developed throughout the years. Journalism reports on society and therefore follows in society’s path. We as journalists are not taught to influence the future, we need to report on the present. It sometimes leads to unfortunate situations in which the media report on the chances of a climate disaster happening without doing something about it. Of course, we hope that by keeping power to account and bringing the important stories to the surface, people’s and especially politicians’ behaviour will change. Solutions Journalism helps to tell stories more constructively and gives the reader insights and inspiration on how to take action, without being an activist. There are climate change activists who fight for legal rights for nature and it has become a global trend to let guardians protect rivers and lakes from pollution or extraction in the courtroom. Journalists report on these cases and have the power to give them the attention they need.
The Law of Nature
With the mental health crisis in journalism and the lack of inclusion, applying the Law of Nature to the profession itself might be a good idea too. It means implementing philosophies about change and embracing complexity. Everything is always changing in nature but our human bodies are constantly changing too. We tend to resist change because it makes us feel uncomfortable, but what if we would embrace it? It would most probably benefit our stress management and make us more open to inclusion too.
Inclusive Journalism 
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