Page - 460 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

460 health professionals should care about biodiversity loss and climate change, and support nature conservation and climate change legislation. At a local level, public health professionals could better link with local policies and practitioners to encour- age greater access to and use of biodiverse urban green spaces through ‘nature- based activities’ like walking groups and gardening. The authors demonstrate how access to and use of natural environments can reduce social inequalities in health, a key goal of modern public health policies and programmes. However, individuals from socio-economically deprived areas are often less likely to be exposed to, and experience the benefits of, green spaces. As such, the authors highlight ‘nature- based social prescriptions’ as a public health intervention to facilitate contact with biodiverse natural environments for those who are less well-off in society. Specific recommendations by the authors that help implement biodiversity and climate change impacts into public health practice include linking nature conservation, pub- lic health and climate change priorities in existing local, national and international policies. In addition, working with planners and managers to ensure that green spaces are evenly distributed in urban areas is needed to avoid social inequalities in health, and robust evaluations of ‘nature-based’ interventions are vital in order to demonstrate causality. Zoe Davies and co-authors discuss the impact that different nature conservation management options can have for both biodiversity and human health. The first management option, managing green spaces for people, involves no or little explicit consideration of the biodiversity quality of those spaces. These green spaces are typically in cities and designed for people rather than nature, which often results in small, isolated islands of green space that contain paved paths, recreation equip- ment, easy-to-maintain plants, and frequent pruning and mowing. The second man- agement option, green spaces managed for biodiversity, involves explicit consideration of biodiversity conservation. These spaces tend to be protected areas that can be geographically distant from cities. Recreational activities of humans in protected areas are mainly managed to protect biodiversity. The authors highlight that the third management option, nature for people and nature, is rare, and discuss opportunities to manage green spaces in cities for both biodiversity and human health. For example, nature conservation professionals could work with city plan- ners and landscape architects to add biodiversity into urban green spaces. Recommendations for managing nature for people and biodiversity from the authors include: maximizing the size of urban green spaces to sustain more species and contribute to greater health outcomes; maximizing the health benefits of nature by creating smaller urban green spaces that can be accessed and used by people; and a more international scope to understand how biodiversity  and health relationships differ by cultural context. As the consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss will require humans to change their behaviour to consume far fewer resources, Raymond De Young dis- cusses how to initiate long-term behaviour change. This new behavioural context  – characterised by the necessity for fundamental change across multiple behaviours and a lack of clarity about what future behaviours will be needed  – requires a differ- M. R. Marselle et al.