The quality of life in our cities critically depends on the intelligent planning and shaping of urban living space, in particular urban nature. By providing a wide range of ecosystem services (ES), urban nature essentially contributes to the well-being of city dwellers and plays a major role in avoiding common diseases through its positive impact on physical and mental health. Health is one of the most important factors underlying human welfare and is, thus, vital to sustainable development. The ES of urban green space provide other social-cultural functions alongside public health, for example by fostering environmental justice and citizenship participation. Thus, they should always be considered when searching for solutions to urban problems. The aim of this research was to determine the impact of green areas in three selected cities on the health and well-being of people by self-reporting of green areas’ visitors. To this end, we posed the research question: which types and characteristics of urban green space are most appreciated by city dwellers? Based on our findings, we have drawn up recommendations for practices to promote better living conditions. We have also pinpointed obstacles to and opportunities for leisure time activities as well as ways of supporting the public health of citizens.
The present transboundary study of ecosystem services (ES) focusses on a section of the Eastern Ore Mountains, a rural low mountain range in Germany and the Czech Republic. Aims of the study were to quantify five biotope types typical for the region (raised bogs, mountain meadows, clearance cairns, near-natural mountain forests, and near-natural streams), to identify some of the specific (not just monetary) values of nature in both countries, and to test appropriate ways to communicate ES aspects to stakeholders and the lay public. The study had to cope with countryspecific differences in terms of data availability, valuation methods, landscape pecularities, and relations between supply and demand aspects. The ES were assessed using both expert-based ('ecological') assessments and economic valuations (e.g. calculation of prices and costs, revealed preferences). Among the provisioning ES, particularly biomass/fodder from meadows, wild fruit, and timber were taken into consideration; among the regulating ES, carbon sequestration and water regulation; and of the cultural ES, landscape aesthetics and recreation. The values of (near-) natural ecosystems in terms of regulating and cultural ES exceed those of provisioning ES by far. The results were also prepared for environmental education using new media, such as scouting games and virtual nature trails supported by mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, or GPS devices).
The reflection of ecosystem services in environmental policy has recently become a key aspect in solving environmental problems occurring as a consequence of their overburdening. However, decision makers often pay attention predominantly to results of quantitative (monetary valuation) methods. This article explores a new way of combining quantitative and qualitative methods that has proven to be a useful practice for achieving better environmental governance. We combine the (quantitative) choice experiment method and (qualitative) institutional analysis as full and equal complements. In our approach, the goal of qualitative institutional analysis is not to verify the adequacy of willingness-to-pay results but rather to better address cultural and social perspectives of society representatives. Such an approach increases the robustness of policy recommendations and their acceptance in comparison with isolated applications of both methods. To verify this general premise, both methods were applied in the territory of the Eastern Ore Mountains in the Czech Republic to capture preferences and attitudes of local stakeholders as well as tourists towards small-scale ecosystems. The results confirm that preference calculations regarding aesthetic values of ecosystems need to be complemented with facts about institutional settings and barriers in order to better address locally relevant recommendations for decision makers, such as the introduction of new economic instruments (e.g., local taxes or entrance fees). The findings of this study can also be considered for governance of larger local, common-pool resources such as (public) forests or protected areas.
Economics(see Šrám & Dostál, 2012) in a situation where the life expectancy for both men and women in the Moravian-Silesian Region is already below the nation-wide average (73.81 years for men and 79.99 for women in the Region in 2013, compared to the national average of 75. 91 and 80.80, respectively).The objective of the paper is to analyse the health status and health insurance expenditures for employees concerned by the AMO mass layoffs. The paper tests the hypothesis that closing down a large heavy industry facility increases the risk of morbidity among the laid-off population and leads to an increase in healthcare expenditures. Quantifi cation of this hypothesis is based on a data set provided by Česká průmyslová zdravotní pojišťovna, a.s. (the primary insurance company of AMO Group employees). The relationship between unemployment and health, including morbidity by cause, is estimated using relative risk indicators.
Unemployment and HealthSystematic attention is paid to the direction of the causal relation between unemployment and health and its mechanisms. Although the majority of research supports the conclusion that unemployment causes worsening of health (e.g., Gordo, 2006;Kuhn et al., 2009), opposite views also exist. Salm (2009) monitored health of individuals for a period of four years after a job loss and found no statistically signifi cant causal effect of unemployment on population health, although he did fi nd worsened health among the unemployed. Salm (2009, p. 22) states that "many people with health problems voluntarily terminate their employment with respect to their health and prefer to be unemployed". Although the latter perspective is relatively rare in international literature, it indicates the necessity to control the effect of subjective factors on the job loss of specifi c individuals. One of the approaches to controlling such factors (and the related reverse causality) is to restrict the research only on cases where an entire plant or facility has been closed down. The plant-closure approach eliminates subjective factors on the job loss of specifi c individuals: all the employees without exception lose their jobs when a plant is closed down (see section 2.1). Results of this type of analysis have been published by Schröder (2013), Kuhn et al. (2009), Schmitz (2011), or Browning and Heinesen (2012.Even the threat of losing a job is in itself a health risk, in virtually the same extent as unemployment (Kim & Knesebeck, 2015). In terms of length of unemployment, Gordo (2006) found a signifi cant negative effect of short-term unemployment only on men, and on both sexes for long-term unemployment. Moreover, Kuhn et al. (2009) state that in the short term, only the increase in mental diseases is statistically signifi cant; an increase in somatic diseases can only be proven in longer periods of unemployment.Particularly in the USA, a job loss is frequently immediately linked to a loss of health insurance and reduced or factually unavailable sophisticated healthcare (e.g., Baicker et al...
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