Page - 428 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

428 acknowledged that conflicts in landscape planning might also appear, for example, regarding the use of allergenic plants or the promotion of vector-borne diseases as an unintended side effect of promoting urban green (Damialis et  al. Chap. 3, this volume; WHO 2016). Consequently, there is considerable evidence that addressing health issues in landscape planning is helpful, indeed necessary, in order for planning authorities to be able to cope with future developments, and in order to make use of potential synergies and to mitigate conflicts and unintended negative side effects of planning. Furthermore, under conditions of increasing climate change impacts and accelerat- ing societal changes, landscape planning, landscape architecture and nature conser- vation will only play a significant role for politicians and decision-makers if such disciplines are able to contribute to the solution of urgent societal challenges  – such as health protection and promotion (see Heiland 2017, 183ff.). As Prüss-Ustün et  al. (2017, p.  474) have said, “Investing in environmental interventions pays off for gov- ernments; it reduces the transfer of hidden costs from other sectors to the health sector”. Conversely, there will be no future for landscape planning if it concentrates only on biodiversity, as it will always take a backseat against other interests  – how- ever important from an expert’s perspective  – such as health, social issues, drinking water supply and economic questions for the broader public and in politics. It is important, therefore, to underline the need for interdisciplinary cooperation between landscape planning and the health sector (see Cook et  al. Chap. 11, this volume). A mere consideration of health in landscape planning is not sufficient; there are greater opportunities for both sides from fuller collaborative working, and these should therefore be a priority: “While a new environmental conceptualisation of health [Ecological Public Health] might seem a difficult and complex task, that is the 21st century’s unavoidable task” (Rayner and Lang 2012, p.  52). Nonetheless: It is a challenging task as it requires cooperation across disciplines and administra- tions with different approaches, aims, values and languages. For example, whereas landscape planners’ thinking is primarily spatially based, the approach of health promotion is oriented towards the individual (Rittel et  al. 2016, p.  20). As shown by Rittel et  al. (2016) in the example of four case-study municipalities in Germany, an intensified cooperation between authorities responsible for nature conservation, landscape and green space planning on the one hand and health authorities on the other is hampered by factors that differ according to the size of municipality: in smaller municipalities, health authorities do not exist (as they are located at a county level), whereas in bigger cities they exist in a very differentiated, non-standardised way, which makes it difficult to identify the appropriate contact person for every planning issue. Furthermore, public health planning and longer term visions for sup- porting health may be beyond the usual concern of the relevant tier of health author- ity, e.g. of local clinical commissioning groups in the UK, which manage delivery of local health services. In the UK, landscape planning issues may be better under- stood at a national level, e.g. by Public Health England. Limited resources and com- petence are additional reasons that make cooperation difficult, factors that may well apply to other countries as well as the UK and Germany. Nonetheless: “The ‘healthy city’ (…) can only be understood as an interdisciplinary task and as the product of a S. Heiland et al.