Page - 251 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

251© The Author(s) 2019 M. R. Marselle et al. (eds.), Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02318-8_11 Chapter 11 Biodiversity and  Health in  the  Face of  Climate Change: Implications for  Public Health Penny  A.  Cook, Michelle  Howarth, and  C.  Philip  Wheater Abstract A biodiverse natural environment is a health-promoting resource.  A given habitat can simultaneously provide multiple ecosystem (and therefore health) benefits, both directly through, for example, flood risk mitigation and cooling, and indirectly as a resource for cultural and physical activities. The single biggest prior- ity for public health is to work across governments and countries to protect biodi- verse natural resources and introduce measures to stem climate change. At a more local level, public health professionals are responsible for devising strategies to pro- mote sustainable lifestyles and facilitate access to natural environments. Modern public health emphasises the reduction of avoidable differences in ill health between the most and least well-off in society. Such strategies therefore need to target those from socio-economically deprived areas, who are most at risk of ill health. Schemes such as nature-based social prescribing or community referral give local commis- sioners of health services the opportunity to bring people into contact with nature. Those with responsibility for the provision of nature-based schemes should be encouraged to use interventions that bring people into active, rather than passive, contact with nature. Further, targeting such interventions towards exposure to envi- ronments with the greatest biodiversity is likely to offer the greatest benefits for human health. Keywords Public health, biodiversity, climate change · Socio-economic status · Health inequalities · Nature-based social prescribing · Green care · Salutogenesis · Community referral · Asset based approach P. A. Cook (*) · M. Howarth School of Health and Society, University of Salford, Salford, UK e-mail: p.a.cook@salford.ac.uk; M.L.Howarth2@salford.ac.uk C. P. Wheater Faculty of Science and Engineering, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK e-mail: p.wheater@mmu.ac.uk