Are we doing enough to understand the changing state of people’s relationships with nature?

Survey data on people’s relationships with nature is a valuable source of evidence to deliver national policy ambitions, from health to urban planning, and to track progress on global sustainability goals. Yet, there is a need for greater coordination and coherence in the production, sharing and use of this data. In many cases, governments, civil society organisations, and researchers already use social surveys on people and nature relations, but these data collection efforts are often inconsistent and uncoordinated.

We are a group of UK survey researchers and practitioners and in this Perspective article, we draw on our experience to suggest actions that others developing and delivering people-and-nature surveys can take to better harness their potential to inform policy and practice. This will be a concerted effort, requiring coordinated action across sectors and no single organization can do this alone. However, the effort will be worthwhile to improve survey quality, secure more investment, and better understand trends across space and time. Without deeper understanding of the human dimensions of environmental change, which people-and-nature surveys can help to capture, we will struggle to forge a more just and sustainable future for people and the planet.