Seite - 274 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

274 countries to protect biodiverse natural resources and introduce measures to stem climate change. Moreover, public support for such an endeavour is likely to be higher if the enormous impact on the health of the human population is emphasised as the outcome of a successful strategy to protect biodiversity and tackle climate change. Public health professionals need to work on a large scale to support maintenance, enhancement and development of accessible, biodiverse greenspace. Public health leaders should work within governments to ensure that health considerations are incorporated into environment and sustainability strategies, and vice versa. Such strategies should be cognisant of the fact that populations that suffer from poverty and ill health are disproportionately more likely to also suffer from a lack of biodi- verse natural environments. While these populations are a priority target for inter- ventions to improve biodiversity, care should be taken that these efforts, by making the environment more pleasant, healthy and desirable, do not cause poorer popula- tions to be displaced. Public health practitioners are responsible for devising strategies to promote sus- tainable lifestyles and facilitate access to natural environments. Access to natural environments should be targeted at those most in need. There is an urgent need to embrace the fact that the natural environment is salutogenic, i.e. health giving. There is an equally urgent need to relax the usual positivistic standards of evidence of effectiveness required in medical intervention, and to utilise more suitable meth- ods to evaluate nature-based solutions, for example, using quasi-experimental or mixed methodologies. This will allow more confident investment in schemes that prioritise access to nature over medical intervention. A significant driver for local decision-makers is the anticipated reduction in health-care costs, since improved outcomes will prevent costly use of doctors and hospitals. Such schemes, including nature-based social prescribing, give local commissioners of services the opportu- nity to target those from socio-economically deprived areas. Those with responsi- bility for social prescribing should be encouraged to use prescriptions that bring people into contact with nature, preferably where that engagement is active rather than passive. Further, it is likely that interventions resulting in exposure to environ- ments with greater biodiversity will offer the greatest benefits for human health. Whatever the scale, biodiversity has a fundamental role to play in human health and well-being. Public health professionals need to embrace biodiversity as a resource and be willing to fight to protect it. In so doing, they can target vulnerable populations and reduce inequalities in health between the richest and the poorest in our society. References Acheson D (1988) Public health in England. The report of the Committee of Inquiry into the future development of the public health function. HMSO, London Acheson D (1998) Inequalities in health  – report on inequalities in health did give priority for steps to be tackled. Br Med J  317(7173):1659–1659. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.317.7173.1659 P. A. Cook et al.