Where's the connection to nature?

World Happiness Report 2025 

This post mentions topics some may find disturbing.

Earlier this year, the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre released the 2025 edition of the World Happiness Report,[1] measuring the relative ‘happiness’ of countries through GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, generosity and the freedom to make choices, and perceptions of corruption.

Finland came top (for the eighth year running), Australia 11^th and the United States ranked 24: the lowest since the survey began in 2012. Worryingly, the report notes ‘the US and Korea stand out for their high and rapidly increasing deaths of despair,’ describing these as ‘death by suicide or substance abuse.’

What’s interesting is that connection to nature is not mentioned or measured as a metric of happiness in the report. This is intriguing, especially as connection to nature is not just important but taken for granted in top-performing Finland. And it starts young!

‘In Helsinki it is completely normal to leave the baby outside, with a baby monitor,’ says mother and social psychologist Jennifer de Paola. And kids routinely cycle to schools by themselves and are free to play outdoors without being monitored. People grow up self-sufficient. Visit Finland’s Heli Jimenez comments ‘that Finns were surprised people in other countries didn’t have “simple skills” like how to build a fire out in nature.’[2]

Granted, there are other factors that may help, like free healthcare and education, and highly subsidised childcare. Taxes are high in Finland, but so are the benefits.

Happiness is such a subjective concept. Looking at scientific enquiry into the relationship between connection to nature and happiness (or wellbeing), happiness is sometimes expressed in terms of eudaimonia (the Aristotelian philosophy of living in harmony with personal values, ethics and personal fulfilment) or hedonia (more of a ‘sugar hit’ of pleasure).  While many more studies are needed, it’s suggested that a sustained relationship with nature is more associated to lasting eudaimonic wellbeing.[3] What’s not in doubt is that time in nature vastly improves human health.[4]

Maybe connection to nature could be a metric for future ‘World Happiness’ reports?