Our aim with the #WeAreNature campaign is to persuade all of the major English-language dictionaries to change their definition of  'nature' to include humans.

#WeAreNature is a campaign led by Lawyers for Nature & House of Hackney, and supported by a fast-growing group of organisations, charities, academics, artists, writers, politicians, activists and school children who believe passionately that humans are a part of Nature. We hope that amplifying this message will help us to protect the natural world, for ourselves, and for future generations.

Western dictionaries currently do not define nature as including humans.

We believe that the current definitions of nature do not reflect the growing scientific evidence and overwhelming consensus that humans are part of Nature and a wider ecosystem.

These definitions reinforce the idea that we are separated from Nature and impact how we consider Nature in our behaviours and actions. The belief that we are distinct from and superior to Nature is driving climate breakdown and destroying biodiversity.

Our language, words and definitions have a huge impact and influence on society; our aim is that anyone searching for the meaning of nature will see there is a wider alternative and this could impact court cases, legislation and education.

Chris Packham

René Antoine Houasse - Apollo Pursuing Daphne

In 2024, we launched the #WeAreNature campaign in the UK. Thousands joined the call. The campaign was featured in The Guardian and sparked conversation across schools, companies, and cultural spaces throughout the UK.

In response, Britain’s biggest dictionary, The Oxford English Dictionary, agreed to reinstate a once-obsolete definition: Nature: the whole of the natural world, including human beings; the cosmos. They also committed to keeping this entry under active review.

A small change, but one with powerful implications. Because how we define a word shapes how we relate to the world it describes.

In the year since the campaign launch, the movement is growing: Global frameworks like One Health and IPBES now affirm human-ecosystem interdependence. School curricula are shifting. Legal personhood is being granted to ecosystems. AI systems like ChatGPT now affirm: Yes, humans are part of nature.

We have also gone back to the major UK dictionaries with these evidential updates, urging them to revise their definitions accordingly—to reflect the truth that humans are not separate from nature, but embedded within it.

Now, one year on, we’re expanding the call globally. In honour of Earth Day, April 22, 2025, we will deliver a letter to four most influential U.S. dictionaries to challenge their Nature definitions.

Merriam-Webster
Dictionary.com
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Random House Webster’s Dictionary

Currently, these dictionaries define nature in ways that implicitly and explicitly exclude humans.

For example:
Merriam-Webster: “the external world in its entirety.”
Dictionary.com: “the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities.”
American Heritage: “the forces and processes of the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activity.”
Random House Webster: “the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activity."

These definitions reflect a deeply embedded worldview that places humans outside of, and often superior to Nature. This view has helped to fuel today’s ecological crises.

“We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth. If we are to survive, if we are to flourish, we must recognize that we are not apart from nature, but a part of nature.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer