on Jane Friedman site:

Snowy mountain peaks, whitewater rivers, and misty evergreen forests are all lovely backdrops for compelling fiction. But if you want to write a book for readers who care deeply about nature—or if you’re trying to convince readers to care—you’ve got to go beyond scenery.

Why? Because that beautiful scenery is passive, it doesn’t ask anything of the audience. Just like real-life scenery, it is consumed and often forgotten. It doesn’t confront your reader, ask them to take a stand, or challenge their opinions or biases. If you want to truly center nature in your fiction, you’ll need to engage it on a deeper level.

First off, let’s agree that there is nothing wrong with nature functioning as a pretty setting in fiction. Filling your writing with lovely descriptions of natural places that are just that, descriptions of beautiful places, is fine. However, if you want the natural world to have a starring role, and importantly, if your readers expect it to have a starring role, then lovely descriptions alone won’t cut it.

But if we need to go deeper than appearances, what do we focus on instead? I believe there are five elements of a story that can be infused with greater meaning by including nature: main character, obstacle, choices, transformation, and point.

Let’s look closer at each of these elements and investigate how applying a nature lens to one or more would bring the natural world to the forefront of your story.