Living in harmony with nature: From concept to an index revealing gaps in nature wellbeing and human contributions

Global conservation goals call for transformative change to address escalating ecological crises. However, current targets, including sustainable development, remain insufficient for enabling effective actions and changes. In this context, living in harmony with nature has emerged as a global vision, yet the goal still lacks an operational definition and sound methods for assessment and tracking. Existing indices often reflect human-centric values and fail to distinguish between measures of outcomes and inputs, limiting their ability to support tailored policy design. In response, this study clarifies the cross-cultural foundations of living in harmony with nature to uncover avenues for cross-cultural integration of the global goal, and introduces the novel Harmony Index as a method for evaluating system states and processes toward this goal. The concept of living in harmony with nature emphasizes the integrity of nature-human systems, acknowledges the intrinsic rights of nature, and recognizes human responsibilities in shaping this relationship. The Harmony Index consists of two complementary sub-indices: the State Index, evaluating the wellbeing of nature and humans, and the Process Index, measuring positive and negative human contributions to nature. An innovative distance-based calculation method, inspired by the Barometer of Sustainability, ensures balanced index integration. Applied to China's mainland (31 provinces), the Harmony Index yields a national score of 71.49. The State Index reveals that nature wellbeing lags behind human wellbeing by 13.49 points nationally and 9.54 provincially. The Process Index highlights limited positive contributions to nature, with a score of 51.82 nationally, and reveals major gaps in ecosystem conservation and climate action. The study further develops province categorization and indicator prioritization methods to demonstrate a strategy for tailored policies. Overall, this study offers a culturally grounded, scalable framework to bridge cultures, science, and policy, enabling governments to track progress and inform effective actions toward living in harmony with nature . • This study clarifies the cross-cultural foundations and evolution of living in harmony with nature. • A novel Harmony Index is developed to quantify progress toward living in harmony with nature. • The Harmony Index distinguishes outcomes and inputs using State and Process Indices. • A balanced calculation method inspired by Barometer of Sustainability is developed. • Results reveal gaps in nature wellbeing and people's positive contributions in China, with tailored policy actions.