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• Planning ‘greenways for mobility’ is an appropriate way to include health issues.
• Landscape planning must tackle key societal problems to be socially
acknowledged.
19.1 Introduction
Multiple studies now suggest that access to green or natural environments may play
an important role in supporting public health, including mitigating air and water
pollution, offering opportunities for healthy activities and contributing to better
mental health (WHO 2016). This has been triggered in part by the challenges of
climate change, especially increases in the urban heat-island effect, and the effects
of urban densification in an increasingly urbanised society, which may have both
positive and negative consequences for the health of urban residents. To tackle these
challenges, health issues must be integrated into spatial and urban as well as land-
scape planning, taking into account the potential for multiple positive health effects
from urban green spaces and elements. However, there are many difficulties in
determining how to guide and regulate such plans in the context of other demands
for sustainable and cost-effective urban development (Wolch et al. 2014).
While green spaces exert many positive effects on human health, or at least have
the potential to do so, they can at the same time be of great importance for protect-
ing developing biodiversity. However, it should be noted that ‘green’ space, espe-
cially in urban areas, does not necessarily contribute to biodiversity (especially its
in situ protection) as it comprises, for example, sport grounds, intensively used
grassland, private gardens and monoculture cropland or forests. Nonetheless, even
sites like these, despite certain adverse environmental effects (e.g. groundwater pol-
lution), can also have positive environmental and human health benefits that should
not be overlooked, even if they often could be enhanced, especially in terms of
biodiversity.
In this chapter, health is understood according to the definition of the World
Health Organization (WHO) as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-
being (WHO 2017a). Consequently, for the purpose of our interest in environment-
health links, health can be divided into social, mental, physical and aesthetic-symbolic
components (the last category meaning that urban green could, for example, sym-
bolise good human-nature relationships to a person, which might support their well-
being), which need to be considered equally (Rittel et al. 2014, 2016).1 Moreover,
health promotion should be distinguished from health protection: health protection
refers to preventing potential health risks and diseases, whereas health promotion
focuses on maintaining health, strengthening health resources and establishing
health-promoting environments (ibid.).
1 The publications by Rittel et al. (2014, 2016) are identical, the version from 2016 is the English
translation of the original publication in German (2014). From here on we quote only Rittel et al.
(2016). S. Heiland et al.
Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change
- Titel
- Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change
- Autoren
- Melissa Marselle
- Jutta Stadler
- Horst Korn
- Katherine Irvine
- Aletta Bonn
- Verlag
- Springer Open
- Datum
- 2019
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-030-02318-8
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.0 cm
- Seiten
- 508
- Schlagwörter
- Environment, Environmental health, Applied ecology, Climate change, Biodiversity, Public health, Regional planning, Urban planning
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Umwelt und Klima