Page - 462 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

462 improve human health and the environment and weaken the impact of climate change are also presented. Kathy MacKinnon and colleagues review the ecosystem services that protected areas and NBS provide for biodiversity conservation, human health and climate change adaptation. Examining different case studies across the world, the authors illustrate how protected areas can become ‘health hubs’ by facilitating physical activity and stress reduction through health walks and other organized activities. As such, protected areas provide an opportunity for people to get away and experience nature and wilderness. The economic value of protected areas in cost-savings for human health, as well as climate change adaptation is examined. In order to foster the use of protected areas and NBS for both biodiversity conservation and human health, the authors recommend increased and improved collaboration between sec- tors and stakeholders, and propose the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 20 SDGs as a mechanism for collaborative action. Ruth Hunter and co-authors examine the environmental and human health and equity benefits of urban green space interventions. In a review of the evidence, the authors find strong support for park-based and greenway or trail interventions for encouraging physical activity and park use  – but only if those interventions involved both physical changes and promotion and marketing events. There was also strong evidence that greening of vacant lots in order to improve human health and well- being also led to a reduction in crime. Strong evidence was also found for the envi- ronmental benefits from urban greening and roof gardens  – specifically, increased biodiversity, reduced air pollution, climate change adaptation and storm water man- agement. The authors found a lack of evidence for the impact of urban green space interventions on equity indicators. Specific recommendations for future urban green space interventions for research, policy and practice are made, such as the impor- tance of robust evaluation research designs, economic evaluations of green space, involvement of the local community in the design of urban green spaces and using a dual approach consisting of both promotion/marketing and physical design. The authors underscore that few other public health interventions can achieve the mul- tiple health, social and environmental benefits for all population groups that can be achieved with urban green space interventions. As climate change imposes direct impacts on the grey, green and blue infrastruc- ture in cities, as well as indirect impacts on the health and well-being of urban dwellers, Thomas Elmqvist and co-authors propose the concept of systems thinking to foster sustainable urban development and resilience for urban health. As a start- ing point, the authors argue that health should be an end goal of climate change adaptation and a proxy to examine the level of resilience of cities. The authors point out that cities are complex systems because agents from different social, ecological and technological networks connect and interact with one another at multiple scales. This complexity of different actors and networks poses enormous challenges for urban sustainability. As such, considering cities from a systems perspective − in which all actors involved in the production, sharing and use of knowledge for action are connected in a social network − can be helpful for resilience management. The M. R. Marselle et al.