Nature-Based Solutions and Protected Areas to Improve Urban Biodiversity and Health

Abstract

Biodiversity and healthy natural ecosystems, including protected areas in and around cities, provide ecosystem benefits and services that support human health, including reducing flood risk, filtering air pollutants, and providing a reliable supply of clean drinking water. These services help to reduce the incidence of infectious diseases and respiratory disorders, and assist with adaptation to climate change. Access to nature offers many other direct health benefits, including opportunities for physical activity, reduction of developmental disorders and improved mental health. Economic valuations of green spaces in several cities globally have found that nature provides billions of dollars in cost savings for health services. Protected areas are increasingly common in, and around, cities to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services, including these benefits for health. Many cities are also launching programmes to enhance the health and environmental benefits of parks, based on a model of Healthy Parks, Healthy People, by Parks Victoria in Australia. Partnerships between conservationists, city planners and health authorities are critical to maximise these benefits. In some places, medical professionals prescribe time in nature, and some cities specify standards for urban green spaces to enhance their health benefits. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals provide an important global framework for such partnerships from global to local level.

Pathways linking biodiversity to human health: A conceptual framework

“…The provided biodiversity-health framework can help inform natural resource managers in developing and maintaining their protected areas or urban parks for both people and biodiversity conservation (Davies et al, 2019;MacKinnon et al, 2019). Public health implications of biodiversity-health relationships can foster the application of nature-based solutions as public health infrastructure by urban planners and landscape architects (Heiland, Weidenweber and Ward Thompson, 2019;Hunter, Cleary and Braubach, 2019).…”

Strengthening the global system of protected areas post-2020: A perspective from the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas

“…Protected areas provide a wide assortment of health benefits, by maintaining vital supplies of both local medicines and the genetic material used to develop pharmaceuticals (SDG3). Protected areas offer many other proven health benefits, including opportunities for physical activity and improved mental health, with economic valuations showing that access to nature can save billions of dollars in expenditures for health services (MacKinnon et al 2019).…”

“…This movement is connected to the growing under standing that parks and protected areas are essential "infrastructure" for both physical and mental health and wellbeing, among other social benefits (MacKinnon et al 2019). As the world continues its path of urbanization, this role for protected areas will grow in importance and many countries are now look ing to create and support urban protected areas (Trzy na 2014).…”

Air Pollution of Nature Reserves near Cities in Russia

“…Protected natural areas by definition are established to be free of man-caused activities and, hence, of pollution. ey provide ecosystem benefits for human health and climate change adaptation [14]. However, studies show that increased concentrations of air pollutants in world's natural parks raise serious concern [15][16][17][18].…”