Benefits of restoring ecosystem services in urban areas.
- Author(s): Elmqvist, T et al
- Organization: Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
- Date Published: June 1, 2015
Cities are a centers of demand for ecosystem services and with projected doubling of urban populations there will be an accelerating demand of these services. Rapid expansion of urban areas present fundamental challenges but there are also opportunities to restore ecological functions to design more liveable, healthy and resilient cities.We present estimates of benefits from urban ecosystem services based on comparison of 25 urban areas in USA, China and Canada.Our results show that across these 25 urban areas, investing in urban ecological infrastructure may often be economically advantageous.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343515000433
Ecohealth and Aboriginal Testimony of the Nexus Between Human Health and Place
- Author(s): Fay Johnston, Susan Jacups, Amy Vickery, David Bowman
- Organization: EcoHealth
- Date Published: January 1, 2007
This Indigenous testimony of the nexus between human and landscape health is entirely consistent with previous anthropological research in Australia. Moreover, the identified benefits to both people and country are consistent with the more limited available epidemiological and ecological research. But policies designed to improve Aboriginal health have barely begun to integrate Aboriginal perspectives, underscoring the inherent Western view that human health is largely decoupled from the natural environment.http://www.springerlink.com/content/l6q4570x8k4237n0/fulltext.pdf
Ecosystems and Human Well-being Health Synthesis
- Author(s): Carlos Corvalan, Simon Hales, Anthony McMichael
- Organization: World Health Organization
- Date Published: January 1, 2005
Nature's goods and services are the ultimate foundations of life and health, even though in modern societies this fundamental dependency may be indirect, displaced in space and time, and therefore poorly recognized. Health risks are no longer merely a result of localized exposures to ""traditional"" forms of pollution, although these still certainly exist. They are also a result of broader pressures on ecosystems, from depletion and degradation of freshwater resources, to the impacts of global climate change on natural disasters and agricultural production. Like more traditional risks, the harmful effects of the degradation of ecosystem services are being borne disproportionately by the poor. However, unlike these more traditional hazards, the potential for unpleasant surprises, such as emergence and spread of new infectious diseases, is much greater.
This report represents a call to the health sector, not only to cure the diseases that result from environmental degradation, but also to ensure that the benefits that the natural environment provides to human health and well-being are preserved for future generations.http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/43354/9241563095.pdf;jsessionid=7D0FEB4B025A33E4BF4A2D117451EBC7?sequence=1
Embedded in Nature: Human Health and Biodiversity
- Author(s): Eric Chivian, Aaron Bernstein
- Organization: Environmental Health Perspectives
- Date Published: January 1, 2004
This guest editorial highlights future challenges in understanding the relationship between human and ecosystem health. The importance of recognizing how biodiversity affects human health and how it is increasingly threatened by human activity will only increase in coming years. Physicians and environmental scientists will need to understand these interconnections because they will be called upon to explain them to policy makers and the public. Such knowledge will also be critically important in clinical medicine, particularly in relation to the emergence and spread of some human infectious diseases.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241805/pdf/ehp0112-a00012.pdf
Healthy Country: Healthy People? Exploring the Health Benefits of Indigenous Natural Resource Management
- Author(s): CP Burgess, FH Johnston, DMJS Bowman, et al.
- Organization: Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health
- Date Published: January 1, 2005
The dual crises in human health and landscape health across northern Australia demand a creative and focused national response. Public health practitioners must genuinely engage with Indigenous concepts of health and foster the trans-disciplinary research required to underpin such policy shifts. [Natural resource management], through its central place in Indigenous culture, may improve the physical, social and psychological health and well-being of some of Australia's most marginalised and disadvantaged peoples. Simultaneously, it provides a vehicle for biodiversity conservation and sustainable community development.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15915614
Natural Thinking: Investigating the links between the Natural Environment, Biodiversity and Mental Health
- Author(s): William Bird
- Organization: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds http://www.rspb.org.uk
- Date Published: December 31, 2007
This report, commissioned by the RSPB, looks at the evidence linking wildlife-rich areas and green space with mental health. Past generations have intuitively understood this relationship, perhaps better than we do, yet the evidence needed to quantify the health value of the natural environment is still evolving.http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/naturalthinking_tcm9-161856.pdf
Promoting Ecosystem and Human Health in Urban Areas using Green Infrastructure: A Literature Review
- Author(s): Konstantinos Tzoulas, Kalevi Korpela, Stephen Venn, et al.
- Organization: Landscape and Urban Planning
- Date Published: January 1, 2007
The aim of this paper is to formulate a conceptual framework of associations between urban green space, and ecosystem and human health. Through an interdisciplinary literature review the concepts of Green Infrastructure, ecosystem health, and human health and well-being are discussed.... (A) proposed conceptual framework highlights many dynamic factors, and their complex interactions, affecting ecosystem health and human health in urban areas. This framework forms the context into which extant and new research can be placed.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204607000503
The Earth Only Endures On Reconnecting with Nature and Our Place in It
- Author(s): Jules Pretty http://www.julespretty.com/
- Date Published: February 4, 2010
For most of human history, we have lived our daily lives in a close relationship with the land. Yet now, for the first time, more people are living in urban rather than rural areas, bringing about an estrangement. This book, by acclaimed author Jules Pretty, is fundamentally about our relationship with nature, animals and places.
A series of interlinked essays leads readers on a voyage that weaves through the themes of connection and estrangement between humans and nature. The journey shows how our modern lifestyles and economies would need six or eight Earths if the entire world's population adopted our profligate ways. Pretty shows that we are rendering our own world inhospitable and so risk losing what it means to be human: unless we make substantial changes, Gaia threatens to become Grendel. Ultimately, however, the book offers glimpses of an optimistic future for humanity, in the very face of climate change and pending global environmental catastrophe.http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6362.htm