Enabling nature’s participation in research
An Experiment in Empathy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6454514 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Suzanne Vallance (0000-0002-8964-0340), Melissa Robson-Williams (0000-0003-0318-3933), Flo Van Noppen, Ronlyn Duncan (0000-0002-2068-2665) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 2097-2110 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sustainability Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1862-4057 • E-ISSN: 1862-4065 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11625-025-01713-8 |
| OpenAlex | W4412101375 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 49 |
The sustainable development construct has failed to arrest environmental decline, mitigate species extinction, slow climate change and reduce enormous global waste streams. Many argue this is because sustainable development retains and reinforces society–nature binaries and configures that relationship primarily for our human benefit. A good partner in a reciprocal, respectful and empathetic relationship would act very differently. The research we present here explores whether it is possible to promote different relationships with Nature within a constrained budget and limited timeframe. Our “experiment in empathy ( as Nature)” was conducted to test the hypothesis that “If Nature set our research strategy, we would do different research and/or do research for different reasons”. We invited selected participants to a retreat to re-write a research strategy as elements of Nature. A comparison of the before and after strategy developed by air, water, soil, landscape, plants and birds shows it is possible to promote more empathetic relationships with the natural environment and that giving Nature a say over our research may result in some intriguing changes to research practice
Biology · Empathy · Landscape ecology · Political science · Sustainable development · Animal and Plant Science Education · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Environmental Education and Sustainability · Psychology · Social Psychology · Ecology
Science in action
Nature
Knowing Nature
Changing Practices, Changing Education
Standards
Empathy
Towards industrial ecology
Sustainable Development as a Contested Concept
Nature performed
Standards and their stories
Sustainable Development is a Dead-End
Sorting Things Out
States of Knowledge
Trust in Numbers
Confronting a Surfeit of People
Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development
Sustainable development
Decolonizing scholarship? Plural onto/epistemologies and the right to science
Using Narrative Workshops to socialise the climate debate
Gathering around stories
The Life Framework of Values and living as nature; towards a full recognition of holistic and relational ontologies
Making intrinsic values work; integrating intrinsic values of the more-than-human world through the Life Framework of Values
Storytalk and complex constructions of nonhuman agency
Uncertainty, sustainability and change
Using ethnomethodology as an approach to explore human–animal interaction
Cultivated, feral, wild
More-than-human cities
Hybrid Geographies
Becoming with a police dog
Tree Stories
Sustainable development (1987-2005)
Seeing Like a State
A Walk in Thirdspace
Empathy Beyond the Human. The Social Construction of a Multispecies World
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |