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A recent United Nations (2021) report stated that education needs to be concerned with enhancing human relationships with the natural world if we are to work toward building a sustainable future. This paper proposes that educational practices underpinned by an ecological orientation in mid-century Aotearoa offer insights for educators looking to enhance human connection with nature. It also argues that ecological thinking has implications for how research in the history of education might be carried out.

The article responds to recent calls in history of education for researchers to attend to the intertwined ecologies of living and material worlds in research approaches by Maria Tamboukou (2020) and Karin Priem (2022). It conducts a close analysis of a 1952 nature diary, encountered in the national archive, written by a 9-year-old pupil on the West Coast of the South Island. The analysis attends to the human–nature interactions the diary records, and to the resonance of the text in the context of post-war curriculum changes.

Post-war nature study in Aotearoa New Zealand built on an aim to nurture children’s connections with nature and to place. Analysis of an entry from the 1952 nature diary highlights these connections and demonstrates the possibilities for a reframing of human–nature relationships that emerge with an ecological orientation in education. These findings speak to urgent contemporary concerns with environmental sustainability and human–nature relationships.

The paper draws on educational philosophy and theory (Fesmire, 2012; Nicol, 2014) alongside recent conversations in the history of education (Priem, 2022; Grosvenor and Priem, 2022; Tamboukou, 2020) to consider human–nature relationality at the heart of ecological thought. It outlines an approach to archival research that is ecologically oriented, generating openness and receptivity to the material world.

Natural environments and imagery are known to have a myriad of effects on people’s physical and psychological states. However, little is known about how exposure to nature-related imagery can influence consumers’ motivational states. This research investigates the effect of exposure to nature on consumers’ regulatory focus. More specifically, this paper proposes that consumers exposed to nature will exhibit stronger promotion-oriented focus and weaker prevention-oriented focus, and as such, these consumers will prefer promotion-framed marketing messages over prevention-framed ones. This paper aims to explore a mediating mechanism and a boundary condition for this effect.

A series of six experiments, including an Implicit Association Test, examined the effect of exposure to images of natural objects and scenes (in contrast with non-nature imagery) on consumers’ regulatory focus and whether they experienced regulatory fit when encountering promotion-framed (vs prevention-framed) advertising messages.

The results revealed that consumers exhibited lower prevention-focused and higher promotion-focused motivational orientation after exposure to nature. Furthermore, exposure to nature led consumers to experience more regulatory fit with promotion-oriented marketing messages than prevention-oriented ones. This study found that natural environments offer urban consumers a reprieve from their day-to-day life, which mediates the effect of exposure to nature on regulatory focus. This study investigated the boundary condition of engaging in maintenance of nature (e.g. mow the grass) in which the effects of nature on regulatory focus were attenuated.

This study used text and pictures related to nature as a way to expose the online participants to nature. Future research may use field studies with participants in real natural settings, with expectation of stronger effects. Second, this study examined mostly urban American participants. There may be cultural differences or living situations (e.g. living “off the grid” and in the “wild”) that influence people’s relationship with nature. Future research may examine how these differences can affect the influence of exposure to nature on motivational orientation.

The findings have direct implications for marketing managers and other related stakeholders. Exposing urban consumers to nature – even images of nature – they become more receptive to promotion-framed advertisements and marketing communications (vs prevention-framed messaging).

Little is currently known about how exposure to nature can influence psychological processes such as motivational orientation. This research contributes to the understanding of consumers’ responses to nature-related imagery in advertising and the effect that nature imagery has on consumers’ motivational orientation. This research also contributes to the body of work on regulatory focus by identifying a novel context in which consumers’ motivational orientation can be influenced.

Environmental philosophies have guided cultures throughout history and continue to do so. This paper uses a framework of environmental philosophies drawn from history and the present, to analyse contemporary corporate environmental reporting. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the philosophical underpinnings of corporate reporting allows for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between corporate activities and nature, and in so doing demonstrates the moral practices of accounting for nature.

Three themes are extracted from a historical review of western environmental philosophy: dualism, transcendence and interconnectivity. These themes are applied to a sample of corporate environmental reports through discourse analysis, enabling the illustration of otherwise obscured moral characteristics of the corporate relationship with the natural environment.

This paper uses environmental philosophies to better understand some of the implicit messaging of corporate environmental reporting. Evidence of each of the three themes is found in a sample of environmental reports, predominantly dualism and interconnectivity.

Understanding that accounting is not just a technical, but also a social and moral practice expands the way the authors can interpret the outcomes of accounting. By presenting an exemplar of how accounting practice such as the corporate sustainability report can be analysed through a moral lens, this paper offers new insights intentioned to inform a more meaningful approach to environmental reporting.

A novel framework to explore the corporate sector’s relationship with the natural environment is presented. In light of current and predicted environmental changes, much of which has been attributed to the impact of corporate activities, the importance of a detailed explication of this relationship – such as the one proposed here – becomes imperative.

This paper draws on the thinking of the nineteenth-century Italian philosopher and poet Giacomo Leopardi and scholars who studied his thoughts on the relationship between nature and humans. Leopardi's philosophy of nature recognizes the alienness of nature in relation to humankind, thus challenging human governance of the planet. The poet’s thoughts align with the dilemma identified in the Anthropocene literature: who speaks for nature? This dilemma has accounting implications in terms of the frameworks and disclosures to be adopted. Therefore, Leopardi’s thoughts can become the basis for a more articulated and complex understanding of some key concepts and issues at the roots of SEA.

The paper utilizes content analysis to examine four essays by Giacomo Leopardi, which serve as the source of our data.

Leopardi recognizes the alienness of nature with respect to humanity and the voicelessness of nature as a generative of conflict. He also warned of the consequences of human governance that does not take nature’s needs into account. These findings open a discussion on the complex accounting implications of the distance between humanity and nature. They can inspire SEA scholars to change the status quo by developing new accounting frameworks from the perspective of nature and adopting forms of governance of nature that recognize the need to protect it as a voiceless stakeholder.

Through Leopardi’s humanistic and poetic philosophy, the perspective of nature can be infused into SEA studies, thereby promoting the need for a multidisciplinary and complex approach to the discipline.

This chapter deals with global sustainability, in its old and modern concepts, typologies, and theories. Most concepts of sustainability, we contend, are anthropocentric, a self-serving attitude that believes in the utmost superiority of man over the rest of the nonhuman universe, which seemingly privileges humans to use, extract, and exploit planetary resources for industrialization and infrastructure development and presumably lead to human growth and prosperity (the Anthropocene). The cost of this however is terrestrial depletion, deterioration, degradation, and decadence that manifest in the current global phenomena of global warming, global climate change, Arctic meltdowns, ocean acidity, massive deforestation, and global carbon footprints, which have collectively rendered human habitability on this earth drastically reduced and jeopardized. In this context, we review the timeline (1992–2022) of the United Nations' sustainability negotiations and accords, several nonanthropocentric and nonanthropomorphic conceptualizations of global sustainability such as Leopold Aldo's land ethic, deep ecology of Naess and associates, Thomas Berry's ecozoic ecology (updated by Spethmann). Combining the best nonanthropocentric developments, we propose a holistic concept of “natural sustainability,” more consonant with critical thinking, which mandates reduced or disciplined use of planetary resources such that Nature can regenerate and renew herself.

Natural sustainability advocates a more fruitful integrative ecozoic paradigm of “sustainability centrism,” which seeks cosmic sustainability of Mother Nature for herself as an end in herself, and we spell out its implications for organizational science and corporate responsibility as an extended global community.

This chapter runs into three parts. Part I: Major Sustainability Types versus Ecozoic Worldview of Cosmic Sustainability; Part II: Conceptualization of Natural Sustainability and Its Justification based on Environmental Ethics, Ecozoic Sustainability, and Deep Ecology; and Part III: Capturing Nature as Nature and Her Moral Imperatives for Understanding Natural Sustainability. Toward the end of this chapter, we also discuss managerial implications and directions for future research.

With rapid urbanization, cities are facing various ecological and environmental problems. Living in harmony with nature is more important than ever. This paper aims to evaluate the ecosystem and ecological features of Azheke village, a key component of the Hani Rice Terraces World Cultural Heritage in China. The focus is on exploring effective ways to improve the relationship between humans and the natural environment through urban design in order to create a livable and sustainable city that can promote the development of sustainable smart urban ecology design.

This study conducted a systematic literature review to answer the following research questions: (1) How does Azheke design achieve harmony between humans and nature? (2) What are the effective approaches to improve the relationship between humans and nature within urban ecosystems? (3) How can urban design learn and integrate from Azheke’s ecological features to improve the relationship between humans and nature?

Azheke sustains long-term human-nature harmony through traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and efficient natural resource use. By incorporating biophilic design and nature-based solutions from Azheke, along with biodiversity-friendly urban planning, we can boost urban ecosystem health and create unique Azheke-inspired urban designs.

This research primarily focuses on the human-nature relationship, exploring design strategies based on biodiversity without delving into the interactions between other components of urban ecosystems, such as social-cultural and economic components.

This paper provides a new perspective and strategies for developing sustainable and smart urban ecology design. These findings can provide theoretical references for urban planners, designers and decision-makers.

This chapter focuses on ecofeminism that primarily refers to feminist theory and activism informed by ecology. Ecofeminism is concerned with real connections between humans and Nature, as also by the domination of Nature by man and, specifically, by women's subservience to men. The foundational ecofeminist assumption is that environmental issues are basically feminist issues, and vice versa. It believes that ecofeminism, best understood and operationalized, can restore Mother Nature (endangered by industrial extraction and exploitation) and reassure rights to animals (deanimalized and threatened by factory farming). Although ecofeminism is a diverse movement, ecofeminist theorists share the presupposition that social transformation is necessary for ecological survival, that intellectual transformation of dominant modes of thought must accompany social transformation, that Nature teaches and reveals nondualistic, nonhierarchical systems of relations that are models for social transformation of values, and that human and cultural diversity are values in social transformation; some of these values and movements even influenced the world via the UN. Accordingly, this chapter highlights major positive contributions of ecofeminism.

Currently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and several outer space industry multibillionaire entrepreneurs – e.g., Elon Musk (SpaceX), Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), and Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), to name a few – are actively engaged in outer space research that reports innovative advances, such as outer space mining, outer space tourism, outer space medicine labs, outer space terraforming of Mars and moon, and altering celestial bodies and terrestrial humans to enhance extraterrestrial survivability. All these advances induce serious ethical concerns of human identity and dignity and destiny, human rights and privileges over earth and her resources, and cosmic sustainability. Further, the current understanding of sustainability development is highly anthropocentric (i.e., the earth and cosmos are meant solely for man's use) and limited in scope as a terrestrial, temporal, economic, and pro-human project. Critical thinking invites sustainability development to include trans-terrestrial, trans-temporal, trans-economic, and transhuman developments. While outer space research certainly offers great hopes of newer living spaces and resources for mankind already strapped by depleted terrestrial habitable spaces, we believe that this capital-intensive “elitist” unregulated outer space research industry may benefit a chosen few at the expense of polarizing mankind in terms of one's undeserved financial capacities to afford extraterrestrial spaces and privileges while endangering Nature by deploying massive terrestrial energy resources for outer space rocket launches causing trailing cosmic debris and planetary pollution. We frame this complex problem into terrestrial humanist issues versus extraterrestrial transhumanist issues, each domain triggered by pro-planetary versus pro-cosmic breakthrough technologies, thus creating a fourfold framework that enables us to explore a distributed ethical strategic understanding and ethical resolution of outer space ethical concerns.

This study aims to identify the role of nature-related features in promoting well-being from the perspective of children as the users of post-disaster schools. It highlights the importance of connectedness to nature in design strategies for post-disaster school reconstruction.

The mixed-method study was conducted in three primary schools reconstructed after the earthquakes in Lombok (Indonesia) and Chiang Rai (Thailand) that integrated some nature-related elements in their design. The questionnaire survey explored the children’s satisfaction with the post-disaster school environment as an indication of well-being.

The findings suggest that priority in post-disaster school design strategies should incorporate nature-related design features that provide opportunities for children to be with friends and to play, to learn in comfortable and safe conditions, to interact with nature and to be in a quiet and relaxing place.

Most post-disaster reconstruction prioritizes the speed of construction rather than the spatial qualities that could help children deal with the disaster. This study provides evidence on the potential of nature-related design features to support the children’s well-being after the disaster.

This paper explores the way in which industrial pollution has been expressed in the narrative accounts of nature, landscape and industry by William Gilpin in his 18th-century picturesque travel writings. A positive description of pollution is generally outdated and unacceptable in the current society. The authors contrast his “picturesque” view with the contemporary perception of industrial pollution, reflect on these early accounts of industrial impacts as representing the roots of impression management and use the analysis to inform current accounting.

The research uses an interpretive content analysis of the text to draw out themes and features of impression management. Goffman's impression management is the theoretical lens through which Gilpin's travel accounts are interpreted, considering this microhistory through a thematic research approach. The picturesque accounts are explored with reference to the context of impression management.

Gilpin's travel writings and the “Picturesque” aesthetic movement, it appears, constructed a social reality around negative industrial externalities such as air pollution and indeed around humans' impact on nature, through a lens which described pollution as adding aesthetically to the natural landscape. The lens through which the picturesque tourist viewed and expressed negative externalities involved quite literally the tourists' tricks of the trade, Claude glass, called also Gray's glass, a tinted lens to frame the view.

The paper adds to the wealth of literature in accounting and business pertaining to the ways in which companies socially construct reality through their accounts and links closely to the impression management literature in accounting. There is also a body of literature relating to the use of images and photographs in published corporate reports, which again is linked to impression management as well as to a growing literature exploring the potential for the aesthetic influence in accounting and corporate communication. Further, this paper contributes to the growing body of research into the historical roots of environmental reporting.