Seite - 227 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

227 p.  192). Other authors have drawn similar conclusions that, due to their importance for local environmental decision-making, “sacred natural sites support spiritual well-being that many people find in their relationship with nature” (e.g. Verschuuren 2010, p.  63; see also Sect. 10.3.2). Emerging from both conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence, the above examples suggest that the relationship between biodiversity and the spiritual domain is strongly related to cultural beliefs and practices, both current and historical. Cooper et  al. (2016) and Russell et  al. (2013) have argued that much of the ESS literature on the spiritual dimension of ESS and spiritual well-being focuses on indigenous peoples. We observe that the language within this literature suffers from a conflation of spiritual beliefs (antecedents) and spiritual well-being (outcomes), as discussed previously. We would add that most studies produce associative findings and few studies directly measure the relational aspects of spiritual well-being as contained within Table  10.1. 10.3.4 Effects of  Biodiversity on  Spiritual Well-Being The preceding sections examined how spiritual beliefs/practices may influence attitudes and actions towards biodiversity, and how sacred natural sites might aid biodiversity conservation. We saw that religious worldviews and practices regarding nature and biodiversity can foster meaning, connection with nature and feelings of transcendence, linking them at least implicitly with spiritual well- being. Likewise, these attributes of spiritual well-being can be found in sacred natural sites that conserve biodiversity, and within the ecosystem services litera- ture there continues to be a focus on clarification, measurement and integration of the spiritual aspect of well- being in relation to the natural environment. In this section, our focus is on how biodiversity and biodiverse settings contribute to spiritual well-being. While no studies explicitly investigated biodiversity’s effect on spiritual well-being, we examine this relationship through an interpretation of several strands of research using our derived categories of spiritual well-being (Table  10.1). 10.3.4.1 Spiritual Outcomes from  Wilderness Recreation Within the field of leisure studies, a body of research has specifically examined the spiritual experience of wilderness settings. Price (1996) identified wilderness recre- ational activities as a form of modern secular spirituality and developed a taxonomy that includes: adventurous (e.g. mountaineering, surfing); observational (e.g. whale- watching, sightseeing); blended adventurous and observational (e.g. fly-fishing, scuba diving); and educational, such as programmes that embed an individual within a wilderness setting to learn skills (e.g. Outward Bound). He asserts that these nature-focused activities, where one encounters the natural environment as 10 Biodiversity and  Spiritual Well-being