How the relationships we have with plants affect human health in many ways

At the height of the pandemic, people flocked to the park near my home. For those of us who live in districts with access to green areasparks allowed us to lounge on the grass and in the shade of trees, admire flowers, enjoy walks in the fresh air, and even grow food in a community garden.

These moments offered a health boost and highlighted just one of the ways in which human health and well-being are supported by our relationships with plants. This is part of what I call relational health —a term that speaks to the ways in which health is created through relationships. From a relational health perspective, health is an evolving process that arises from encounters between humans and various aspects of nonhuman nature.

Sometimes the encounters are not good—think of emerging infectious diseases to remind yourself of that. But for the most part, interactions between humans and nonhuman nature are positive, health-giving, and sustaining. Our relationships with plants are a good example.

Plant blindness

Euro-Western culture has largely ignored the multiple roles that plants play in society. This is called “plant blindness,” “the inability to see or notice plants in one’s environment.” Plants are nothing more than background foliage in our busy lives—or worse, they are redundant.

At local level, trees die when homeowners renovate AND infrastructure is expandingAt a global level, we show ignorance about the health-promoting role of plants when we accept the destruction of forests in the name of development, palm oil plantations or paving wetlandswhere all kinds of plants bloom.

The lack of awareness of the role of plants in maintaining human health is particularly striking when we consider that plants produce oxygen. We cannot breathe without them. They purify our water, provide us with food and medicine, fibers for clothing, materials for building houses..

The role of plants

Botanists and ecologists study the natural sciences of plants. As social scientists, my colleagues and I consider various The roles that plants play in our social and political world.

Plants can be considered social actors and players in society, so I look at the ways in which plants support our health, not only in terms of the food they provide us with, or the oxygen and shade they provide, but also in the ways in which our relationships with plants facilitate political decisions and actions that support urban health.

That nonhuman nature is part of society is alien to Euro-Western thought. Since the Enlightenment, the dominant Euro-Western worldview has viewed man as the supreme species, leaving the rest of the world as a resource to be exploited, as a writer and philosopher Silvia Wynter explores in her work.

To see the plant as a participant requires a change of worldview, for some. Indigenous ontologies have understood and appreciated the contribution of non-human beings to the creation of the worldPeople in other parts of the world, including the Indian subcontinentunderstand that humans are not the only actors on planet Earth. Furthermore, the knowledge that health is created through the relationships between humans and nonhuman nature has long been part of indigenous ways of knowingOnly in Euro-Western society have other worldviews been ignored and attempted to be erased.

Plants as participants in social life

So what happens when plants are social actors? Plants are clearly not like us—they do not act with intention. Rather, their agency as health actors emerges from relationships.

AND conducted fieldwork in the Regent Park neighborhood of Toronto which is being transformed from a residential community to a mixed-income area. The redevelopment included building on land where residents had grown food for decades. Residents did not want to lose their space to grow food, so they advocated for gardens in the modern neighborhood. They wanted continued access to homegrown vegetables and the peace of mind and exercise that gardening provided. They did not want to lose their relationship with plants.

Simply put, the relationship between people and plants made it easier to defend rights, and residents managed to carve out at least some space for gardens in the modern project.

At first glance, it may seem that advocacy was the work of humans. They were the ones who spoke up and asked for plants to be included in the design. But if you recognize the agency of nonhuman nature, it changes the analysis.

If we consider plants as participants in society, then their role in advocacy becomes apparent. Their role comes from the relationships they have with humans. When humans consider their needs in the decision-making process, they play a role. Plants cooperate with humans, and their physical presence in gardens constitutes a claim to the land. This shift in worldview opens up many possibilities for better understanding the role of nonhuman nature in contemporary society.

This scenario also sheds lithe on how health is created through relationships between humans and nonhuman nature in the city. Health is not something that is possessed in the body, but rather for gardeners who rely on the garden for food and well-being, health is created in part through their relationships with the plants in their gardens.

To promote human health in times of climate change and global pandemic, it is necessary to take a closer look at our relationship with nonhuman nature in ways that may be unfamiliar to the Euro-Western worldview.