Green cities, healthy cities: urban green spaces, human health and wellbeing in the Global South

Human health and wellbeing can be described as the ‘ultimate ecosystem service’. Indeed, natural environments, and the ecosystem services they provide, are recognised as crucial for both mental and physical wellbeing. However, despite the many reviews and opinion pieces on the topic, the link between health, well-being and the natural world has yet to be fully elucidated particularly in low-income countries (LICs) in the Global South.

Over half the world’s population now lives in towns and cities. With the degree of urbanisation increasing there is mounting concern about the effects on natural environments, biodiversity and ecosystem service provision. This is of particular concern as natural environments, and the ecosystem services they provide, are recognised as crucial for both mental and physical well-being. Towns and cities therefore represent key locations for understanding and quantifying the links between health and the natural world.
Compared to what we are used to in the developed world, patterns of urbanisation in the Global South are markedly different. Informal settlements, lack of planning and limited access to public services all impact on residents’ quality of life in urban areas. With the changes to diet and lifestyle that urbanisation brings, particularly reduced access to affordable fruit and vegetables and limited opportunities for physical activity, urban poor communities are increasingly experiencing the debilitating effects of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and mental ill-health. Yet, opportunities for improving urban residents’ access to ecosystem services exist, with increasing attention being paid to initiatives, such as urban agriculture and the maintenance/provision of urban green and blue infrastructure, particularly in slum neighbourhoods. However, the current evidence base of these associations and interventions is limited. There is therefore a substantial research and knowledge gap which this studentship will begin to fill.

The studentship will focus on the role that natural environments might play in reducing or exacerbating a range of non-communicable diseases (e.g. diabetes, obesity, heart conditions),neglected health conditions (e.g. mental health, accidental death or injury) and wider social and economic impacts in selected Global South cities. In particular, the studentship will take a multi-scale approach to understand links between the natural world and health, focussing on, for example: (i) global scale relationships between health metrics and the natural environment, using complex datasets and remote sensed imagery; (ii) city-scale drivers of health outcomes and the role for natural environments in mitigating poor health; (iii) household-scale exposure to the benefits and hazards associated with greenspaces and impacts on perceived or actual health.

In all cases, the student will be working to establish the links between the type and extent of natural habitats, biodiversity, ecosystem function and service delivery, via, for example targeting the importance of ecological concepts such as diverse functional traits within the animal and plant communities and issues of scale, size and connectivity of natural areas.