Page - 213 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

213© The Author(s) 2019 M. R. Marselle et al. (eds.), Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02318-8_10 Chapter 10 Biodiversity and  Spiritual Well-being Katherine  N.  Irvine, Dusty  Hoesly, Rebecca  Bell-Williams, and  Sara  L.  Warber Abstract Among government agencies, practitioners and researchers there is growing interest in the potential of natural environments for human health and well- being. In parallel, conserving biodiversity is seen as critical in this effort. Likewise, spiritual well-being is increasingly considered as an important dimension of human health. This chapter examines the inter-relationship between biodiversity and spiri- tual well-being. We first consider what spiritual well-being is. Then, based on a review of literature, we discuss four themes that illustrate biodiversity and spiritual well-being relationships, including: (i) influence of spiritual traditions on biodiver- sity; (ii) sacred places as repositories of biodiversity; (iii) the spiritual domain within ecosystems services; and (iv) the effects of biodiversity on spiritual well- being. We bring these strands together in a conceptual model and discussion of measurement issues that can inform future research. Keywords Spiritual traditions · Sacred places · Ecosystem services · Connectedness · Conceptual model K. N. Irvine (*) Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences Research Group, The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK e-mail: katherine.irvine@hutton.ac.uk D. Hoesly University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA e-mail: hoesly@ucsb.edu R. Bell-Williams University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK S. L. Warber Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, Truro, Cornwall, UK e-mail: swarber@umich.edu