Humans have caused widespread loss of ecosystems and species. Many of us experience these impacts on a daily basis. There might be invasive insects in our garden, toxic algal blooms at our favorite lake, or plastics washing ashore on the beach. Damage to the beautiful places that we love can be painful. Some people are left feeling powerless and wondering what’s left of wild, undamaged nature.

A common argument is that the world is better off without us and that human use of ecosystems must be substantially reduced. Others are uncomfortable with a conclusion that diminishes humanity and limits access to its surrounding ecology, and have a sense that we are in some way special and bear explicit responsibility to look after the Earth. They consider whether caring for nature is something that we can do best by wise participation rather than retreat or exclusion.

Navigating this environmental dilemma is tough. Like other pressing social questions, the solution hinges on what a human being actually is, what the world is for, and even whether God has anything to do with it. In other words, environmental sustainability requires a correct model for the identity and role of the human person with regard to other elements of the natural world.

Society offers a range of options for this model. One spectrum that is often proposed emphasizes either an anthropocentric (human-focused) or ecocentric (ecology-focused) approach. The first option, taken to its furthest extreme, sets humans apart from the rest of nature as an ultimate authority without responsibility. The world becomes solely a pool of resources for humans, such that the components of nature can be freely exploited for our advantage. The opposing extreme absorbs humans into an ecosystem in which every living thing has equal significance, rights, and responsibilities. Plants and animals (including us) are reduced to nodes in the food web. Humans are no longer the reference point, any more than chipmunks or willow trees.

Dissatisfaction with these anthropological caricatures has led to the concept of ‘relationality’ in sustainability science. The turn to relationality introduces diverse (though sometimes ambiguous) social-ecological processes and interactions which allow for responsible human use of nature. Research on relationality often considers traditional practices such as farming and foraging that have long supported rural lifestyles in the United States. Of course, long before the U.S. became a nation, large areas of the apparently pristine wilderness first encountered by European colonists were already systematically used and managed by indigenous peoples.

Long-term sustainable use of nature can constitute environmental stewardship, in which people and their activities comprise integral parts of the ecosystem. Stewardship is realized through sustainable practices that are built around harvesting the goods of nature and oriented to ecological and human wellbeing. Such outdoor practices are characteristically ‘embodied.’ They involve theoretical learning but are expressed through muscle memory and labor—physical activity! It is this physical activity that enables us to ‘behold’ our environment, such that understanding of nature is indivisible from sensory engagement. This recognition implies what the British anthropologist, Tim Ingold, called “a world given in experience.”

The experiential notion of relationality is profoundly rendered in the overall idea of Catholic ‘integral ecology.’ Building on the groundwork laid by John Paul II in Centesimus annus, Pope Francis followed his saintly predecessor explaining that through an ‘integral ecology,’ Catholics cannot “claim that nature is a mere ‘setting’ in which we develop our lives and our projects.” Instead, “our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings,” such that “we are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.” The current Pope further emphasized that “this is not to put all living beings on the same level nor deprive human beings of their unique worth and the tremendous responsibility it entails.” In other words, humans are an integral part of nature, but also set apart to occupy a unique role in caring for the Earth.

This situated dynamic means that human activities are intrinsically linked to specific places and creatures. Ingold described this local connection in terms of ‘dwelling.’ He considered that our fields and forests can be interpreted as a ‘taskscape’ within which human practices repeated in place and time establish well-trodden pathways that exist in the land, but also in our memory and our culture. These enduring and meaningful patterns can be followed, interpreted, and structured through time. Think of an ancient village in Italy, where the food and the language, the architecture and the art seem to have grown organically from the surrounding hills and valleys.

Ingold explored the idea of dwelling using a 16th-century painting called The Harvesters. This image shows field hands at work, reaping and sheafing a luxuriant crop of wheat, while others pause to rest under a tree and eat a midday meal. We see the whole life cycle of bread, our most basic food, and its consumption ‘with companions’ (from the Latin cum (with) and panis (bread)). The Harvesters represents a moment in the taskscape, where the repeated human practices which follow the annual agricultural cycle peak in the fulfillment of gathering and eating nature’s bounty.

Ingold suggested that “rites, feasts, and ceremonies are themselves as integral to the taskscape as boundary markers such as walls and fences are to the landscape.” The idea is that complex outdoor practices like farming and fishing bring us into natural cycles. For example, the seasons tend to link themselves to our cultural practices such that times of sparsity (winter) are connected with fasting (Lent) and seasons of plenty (spring, fall) invoke times of feasting (Easter and Thanksgiving). Celebrations like Thanksgiving did not emerge as abstract ideas that were then imposed on nature. Rather, these feasts bubbled up out of a taskscape in which humans and their activities were inextricably tangled with fundamental aspects of how the world works.

God created the Earth, and He has written himself into it. Pope Francis highlighted that “the word ‘creation’ has a broader meaning than ‘nature,’ for it has to do with God’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance.” When we care for the ecological processes in which we are embedded, we walk with our Creator through the highs and lows of the road to salvation.

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