Subjective well-being as a driver of environmental stewardship toward sustainable goal attainment and environmental integration
摘要
This piece aims to position the science of well-being within the sustainable goal and environmental integration literature. Aiming to provoke dialogue, it offers an analytical-descriptive and synthetic approach while leveraging recent bibliometric data from the Web of Science. Sustainability represents a cornerstone between human progress and nature. Environmental integration occurs when ecological considerations are weaved into human decision-making pertaining to sustainability of natural resources. The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are meant to harness an equilibrium between human agendas and environmental conservation. Similarly, objectives for environmental integration in the Euro-Mediterranean region champion tracks that channel ecological and biospheric research into organized environmental integration objectives. Such goals and tracks represent an attempt to guide environmental stewardship, respectively. This drives responsible management and care of natural resources and ecosystems. Human states are behind this decision-making regarding protection, conservation, and restoration while balancing social and economic needs of living populations. Although psychological theories do not explicitly address the connection, they potentially can and should include how subjective well-being can motivate individuals and communities toward responsible management and protection of nature through individual and collective efficacy. The human-nature nexus predicts motivation toward environmental stewardship, which plays a crucial role in achieving SDGs while also supporting broader human well-being. This relationship is bidirectional. Human well-being enhances future-mindedness, which predicts biophilia, and fosters, in turn, a sense of appreciation and responsibility. This connection often leads to pro-environmental behaviors, conservation efforts, restoration of ecosystems, and biodiversity protection through environmental stewardship and thus in environmental integration.
Graphical abstract