Human rewilding: Practical pointers to address a root cause of global environmental crises

The rewilding discourse to date has mostly been concerned with ecological dimensions of rewilding, but attention for human dimensions of rewilding is growing, and here we focus on the rewilding of humans. The rationale being, that human rewilding is a crucial process in restoring the broken relationship between humans and nature on both individual and societal levels. We consider what human rewilding could mean in a practical sense by presenting two case studies. The first is the rewilding of daily life, based on a yearlong experiment of living outside, and a straightforward research question: In a land without wilderness, is it possible to find wildness in everyday life? The second is the rewilding of education in a way that challenges traditional didactic frameworks and approaches. Conceptually, we approach human rewilding as a set of visions and practices that acknowledge human evolutionary history within the contemporary context of life on Earth. We argue that human rewilding is a necessary, complimentary component to ecological rewilding efforts. It provides a constructive and fundamental answer to the question of where humans sit in rewilding efforts, and suggests no less than a human inclusive, integrated part of the answer to global environmental crises.