Measuring Our Relationship With Nature: A New Way to Think About the Future

It’s not every day that a paper proposes a new metric that might reshape the way we think about the future of the planet.

But that’s precisely what a major international team of scholars that I have had the privilege to be involved with - including geographers, ecologists, psychologists, economists, Indigenous thinkers and policy experts - has just done.

Published at the end of last week in Nature, our article lays out an ambitious proposal: the creation of a Nature Relationship Index (NRI), to complement the Human Development Index (HDI) and offer a new way of thinking about the human-nature relationship.

Since its launch in 1990, the HDI has become a globally recognised measure of progress - tracking life expectancy, education, and income. Our proposal is designed to reflect a different kind of success: how well societies are nurturing healthy, reciprocal relationships with the natural world.

This shift is significant. For decades, most environmental frameworks have been rooted in the language of limits: carbon budgets, extinction thresholds, planetary boundaries. These concepts have been powerful in drawing attention to ecological crises; but they’ve also painted a picture of doom and deficit.

By contrast, the Nature Relationship Index is explicitly aspirational. It does not seek to measure harm averted or damage contained. It sets out to reward nations for actively improving the conditions in which people and nature can thrive together.

We argue that how we frame environmental challenges matters: if we are told constantly that we are the problem, and that everything we do causes harm, then the natural human response is apathy or anxiety.

Instead, we suggest a diffferent starting point: people want to live in a world where rivers are clean, where species are protected and where the air is breathable. The Nature Relationship Index begins from this premise, and draws on human development theory to offer a more empowering vision of the future, one that is based not on constraint but on mutual flourishing.

The structure of the Nature Relationship Index is inspired by the HDI’s elegant simplicity. It proposes three core dimensions:

1. Nature is thriving and accessible. So: are there spaces where both people and wildlife can coexist in safety, beauty and vitality?

2. Nature is used with care. In other words, are societies using natural resources in ways that maintain or improve their quality, avoiding pollution and degradation?

3. Nature is safeguarded. That is so ask, are governments investing in environmental protection, establishing laws, institutions, and spending to protect the biosphere?

Each dimension is scored using straightforward, understandable indicators: the amount of land under effective conservation; per capita carbon emissions; access to semi-natural landscapes; environmental legal frameworks; and more. These are then normalised and aggregated to produce a national score.

Like the HDI, there is no upper limit: progress is always possible.

What makes this proposal compelling is not just its technical feasibility, but the underlying ethos. It affirms that societies can develop in ways that don’t destroy the living world. It underlines that Indigenous communities with centuries of experience in land stewardship have valuable lessons for industrial societies.

It recognises that access to nature is not a luxury, but a vital part of well-being. And crucially, it is adamant that people everywhere already value these things. As we note in the article, global surveys consistently show strong public support for cleaner air, greener spaces, and the protection of wildlife - even if political systems often lag behind.

There are, of course, challenges. Data availability remains a problem, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Many relevant indicators are either missing, inconsistently updated, or biased towards wealthier nations. Moreover, metrics can sometimes obscure as much as they reveal. A country with high green investment might still be exporting environmental damage through global supply chains. A nation too poor to pollute may appear to score well, though not by choice.

We all recognised this when we met in a two day workshop last year. The stellar team assembled by Pedro Conceicao at UNDP, by my Oxford University colleague Erle Ellis,. were clear-eyed about these limitations.

So our prototype Nature Relationship Index is presented as a proof of concept, not a finished product. Much like the early HDI, the Nature Relationship Index is designed to evolve, as one would expect, with wider consultation, with better indicators, with improved equity and more.

We actively seek global participation to co-develop the index, especially from Indigenous peoples, local communities and citizens around the world.

What’s particularly interesting is how the Nature Relationship Index seeks to reposition human development and environmental stewardship not as conflicting aims, but as intertwined.

In pilot results, countries like Costa Rica score highly on both Human Development Index and Nature Relationship Index, suggesting that it is possible to design economies and societies that lift people out of poverty while protecting ecosystems. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Nature Relationship Index, then, is that it expands our sense of what is politically and practically possible.

Why This Matters

At a moment when despair about the environment can feel paralysing, the Nature Relationship Index offers a hopeful but rigorous tool.

It builds on the success of the HDI in shaping international policy and public awareness, while correcting a critical blind spot: our dependence on nature, and the many forms of value - spiritual, cultural, aesthetic, relational - that are not captured by GDP. Economic growth is important; the sweetspot is to match growth with sustainability - and to measure that key relationship.

Just as the Human Development Index helped redefine what ‘progress’ means for human societies, the Nature Relationship Index can do the same for how we think about our place within the biosphere. It could encourage countries not just to limit damage, but to aspire to do better - for example, by restoring wetlands, through rewilding or the reintroduce of species, through ensuring that children grow up with access to green spaces.

We hope that in a time of rising climate anxiety, biodiversity collapse and social fragmentation, such a shift in mindset could be transformative. Not just because it measures different things - but because it asks different questions. Not ‘How much can we extract before we cross a boundary?’, but ‘How can we live well, together, on this Earth?’

Having this paper published in what is widely regarded as the world’s pre-eminent academic science journal is testimony to the rigour and brilliace of the co-authors. Getting through peer review with an idea as ambitious and consequential as this is not easy.

It also serves as a reminder, then, that the sum of the parts can be greater than individual excellence: the range of backgrounds, specialisisms, viewpoints, experiences and questions of the group behind this paper show that if we work together, it is possible not only to have good ideas; but ones that change our understanding and engagement with the world around us.

Do please read if you have a chance. It’s one of the most important initiatives I’ve ever been involved with.

More soon.