The environmental paradox of outdoor recreation

For many people today, their everyday lives are characterised by living separated from non-human lifeforms and their habitats. At the same time, a significant proportion of Swedish residents spend their leisure time in natural environments, mainly by walking. Thus, there is a potential in walking in peri-urban environments for people to reconnect themselves with the more-than-human. Despite this close-to-nature nature of walking, this activity is not too often enabled by energy-intensive means of transport that contribute to a changed climate which in turn leads to degraded habitats for both humans and non-humans. Thus, an environmental paradox arises when people’s encounters with nature are maintained by unsustainable means. In this doctoral project, this paradox is studied from the practitioner’s perspective.

Doctoral student: Oskar Abrahamsson
Supervisor: Marie Stenseke