Green Care as a place-based transformative practice

It is already well-known that nature supports human well-being and social inclusion. But it does much more. The PhD research by Angela Moriggi reveals that so called Green Care practices that refer to services that aim to support human well-being, social inclusion in a professional manner, also enhance local sustainable development.

Angela Moriggi’s work is based on extensive fieldwork in three different cases of Green Care in Finland: a care farm, a bio-dynamic farm and a nature-tourism company. The results of the study suggest that Green Care practices are ways in which people transform relations in places inspired by sustainable visions and mind-sets and foster sustainable pathways to place-based development in multiple dimensions.

First, Green Care practitioners choose business models and economic relations that put people and social value creation (as opposed to profit accumulation) at the centre of their goals and activities. The social orientation of Green Care not only benefits service-users and participants, but also the surrounding communities and local networks and institutions.

Green Care practices are informed by deep ecological values which run counter to economic models that over-exploit natural resources. At each of the two farms, practices are oriented towards conserving and regenerating natural resources. In the case of the nature-tourism company, practitioners combine impact minimization with an attempt to reconnect people to nature via contemplative learning experiences.

The practices are rooted in Finnish cultural beliefs and traditions that contribute to re-embedding relations in particular places, celebrating their peculiarities in both material (via conservation of traditional architecture and landscapes) and immaterial (via oral traditions) ways.

The theoretical framework of the research was grounded in the care ethics literature and relational approaches to sustainability. Using this frame, the research reveals how interdependence and interaction with others, humans and non-humans, drive and impact actions that enact care, as a motive and intention, and a practice. Within that framework, the research looked into change agency of different actors around the green care practices and their ways to accomplish innovative ways in which social needs of the different target groups were met. It also seeks to understand the place-based character of the practices: how the Green Care practitioners made use of and cared for the resources that the place had to offer.

Understanding the practices of green care in Finland was a process of co-creation based on participatory-action research and transdisciplinary research and inspired by design thinking and visual methods facilitating an innovative process of reflection and capacity building for the participants involved. The research is relevant both for a research community and society more broadly looking for new ways to take care of the social and health care services and foster sustainability.Angela Moriggi was employed by Luke 2016–2019 in a Marie Curie ITN project SUSPLACE, which aimed to explore the transformative capacity of sustainable place shaping practices. Angela Moriggi’s Public Defence June 1, 2021 fully online. Live broadcast Direct link +  link if you missed the live broadcast.The full PDF of the thesis will be accessible online after the defense and should be traceable at its DOI link .