The relationship between health and nature is a hard topic to research. There are a vast amount of variables that limit the rigor of studies on the subject. Have faith, there is some evidence. The way I see social workers engaging with this at a macro level is questioning why more funding is not going into this topic. The theory is there. Yet, Economic value or incentive to the answer question of deep ecology is not. Economic value is rooted in cultural values. When we don’t value the specific population, we also don’t appreciate what it is they lack. The house on the ocean, in the mountains, within profound secluded nature, is costly. That cost is the outcome of the way we value those spaces… even if we can’t quantify why.
“Deep ecology argues that the natural world is a subtle balance of complex inter-relationships in which the existence of organisms is dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems…Human interference with or destruction of the natural world poses a threat therefore not only to humans but to all organisms constituting the natural order” (Deep Ecology).