The Need for Nature enumerates recent factors restricting access to the outdoors, including motorized traffic, parental fears, lack of space and time, and others, and the resulting reduction of children’s contact with nature, particularly where urban children spend their daily lives: schools and neighborhoods. Issues are framed within a social-ecological model reviewed in relation to the international environmental movement and children’s rights, concluding with suggestions for an action agenda and policy developments that may lead to a new sense of child-biosphere relations. Supportive research needs are noted.

Moore, Robin C. 1997. The Need for Nature: A Childhood Right. Social Justice 24(3): 203-220.