The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature Deficit Disorder

434 Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 21 No. 2 (Winter 2011) ISSN: 1546-2250 The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature Deficit Disorder Louv, Richard (2011). Chapel Hill, N.C: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill; 317 pages. $24.95. ISBN 9781565125810. Richard Louv's eight books show a long history of concern for the quality of life of families in the United States, with particular concern for the problems and possibilities that communities and families present to their children. His seventh book, Last Child in the Woods, articulated a concern for children's declining access to free play outdoors in natural areas. It became a bestseller, resonating with readers to a degree that took him by surprise, being translated into ten languages, and sparking an international movement to "leave no child inside." As Louv has commented, it is rare for a journalist and author to find that his writings place him in a public spotlight, but Louv has seized the occasion by co-founding the Children and Nature Network (www.childrenandnature.org) and planning strategically with affiliated organizations to initiate, in his words, a "self-generating social movement" that reaches across political divisions to integrate access to natural habitats and biodiversity into children's environments at all scales. The Nature Principle, Louv's most recent book, reports on his experiences since the publication of Last Child in the Woods, as he has met people and toured programs engaged in similar work. The book also builds on the Children and Nature Network's annotated bibliographies of research that document how children benefit from contact with nature. In a third strand, it shares his personal relationship with nature as a basis for family bonds and personal refuge—first when he was a boy and young man before and after his father's mental breakdown and suicide, and later as a place for connection with his own wife and sons. During the course of the eventful years since the publication of his bestseller, Louv's interests have broadened to include international initiatives and the importance of connections with nature for adults as well as children. 435 Louv builds his case that the "Nature Principle" can create conditions where people of all ages can live "most fully, smartly, happily." He argues that although computer technologies can serve social networking and enhance our understanding of the natural world, the more that we rely on cyberspace, the more we need multisensory, full-bodied connection with the natural world to join us directly to the web of life that is greater than any human invention, on which our existence and well being continue to depend. He also advances the argument that access to nature is a human right—admitting the hesitation of many environmentalists to make this claim, since human interactions with nature have been so often destructive. Louv maintains that we need to move beyond the division between humans and nature that has been perpetuated both by the doctrine of human dominion over nature and by many environmental organizations' definition of nature as wilderness that needs to be protected from people. Through the programs and initiatives that he describes, he suggests how people and nature can be brought together in ways that benefit all species. The Nature Principle is a quilt work of personal voices, program descriptions, and brief research summaries. It draws on newspaper columns and entries for the Children and Nature Network that Louv has written over the years. As a result, it has an episodic quality, but as the chapters unfold, it develops Louv's wide-ranging vision of how people can create a more balanced world where their daily lives can be as immersed in nature as they are in technology. As Louv defines it, the Nature Principle "holds that a reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit and survival" (3). He describes it as "an amalgam of converging theories and trends as well as a reconciliation with old truths" (3). Therefore it cannot be explained in a few words, like the concept of "nature deficit disorder" that communicates the message of Last Child in the Woods for many people. The Nature Principle...