Nature and climate change: conversations reveal a complex relationship

Award-winning research finds complexities and contradictions in how we engage in leisure and think and act in terms of climate change.

Jane Hurly - 17 June 2011

If we diligently recycle, compost our garbage, take cloth bags to the store, try to buy less, yet feel we must drive five hours to really experience the full majesty of nature in the Rockies, what does that say about our perceptions of what a nature experience is, and of our role in climate change?

These are some of the intriguing and complex questions and contradictions doctoral student Lara Fenton presented at the Canadian Congress of Leisure Research at Brock University last month. Fenton's paper, "Talkin' about a revolution: conversations on climate change and activism" earned her a special award of distinction at the Congress, the first of its kind ever presented.

"I wanted to explore the discourses between how people talk about climate change, their leisure as a nature experience, the intersections between these and what this meant for their climate change activism using the lens of social construction," says Fenton, who interviewed people at Hawrelak Park on the subject.

Using this lens, "Activism is related to how we talk about nature and climate change," explains Fenton. She notes that this activism can take many forms. "For example, someone who talks about nature as being a visceral, emotional experience may feel personally responsible (for climate change), need to talk to people one-on-one and try to change their minds about their personal behaviours." Others, she notes, may look beyond the production of greenhouse gases and pollution and include actions such as not buying from companies they don't deem ethical, or consider the origin of products they buy, shunning products from countries where human rights are violated. "That (type of activism) considers climate change as a broader problem," she says.

Fenton found that perceptions of what nature is and what it is not in relation to climate change activism differ widely and reveal plenty of contradictions, such as the desire to reduce one's carbon footprint, yet drive or fly long distances to a mountain park or other remote natural setting to truly experience nature. "Here leisure is contributing to the climate change problem when you have to drive five hours to Canmore, but at the same time have a really felt responsibility about climate change," she says.

"This is where the social construction comes in," says Fenton. "We have been trained, we've inherited these ideas of what the mountains are to us: the awe experience, that emotional connection. What would happen if we got those experiences closer to home?

It's a dichotomy that Fenton understands well. An experienced river guide for a decade, she leads rafting and canoeing trips in Canada's wilderness areas, and she's quick to point out how her own leisure and research also "perpetuate unsustainable notions of leisure" as these draw her to remote nature spaces.

This summer she'll take a group of people rafting on the Burnside River in Nunavut, a trip which will require participants to fly to Yellowknife then take a Twin Otter to the staging point. It's an expensive trip and, says Fenton, "Some may say (these trips) are quite elitist because in order to afford to go on the Burnside trip you need to pay a lot of money."

And again, she points out, there's the fact that extensive travel is required to experience nature, quite possibly by people who care deeply enough about it to experience it in an 'up close' fashion, and who may feel as though they're 'roughing it' away from the energy-guzzling mod-cons of urban life while doing so.

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Lara Fenton is a doctoral student in the area of sociocultural studies of sport and leisure. She has chaperoned many groups to Canada's remote wilderness areas on rafts or in canoes; she has led commercial trips, kids' groups and Outward Bound adventures that focus on interpersonal development.

At home her desk sits before a large window that looks out onto a treed landscape…