This is a short letter, that is open access. What’s interesting about it is the four causal pathways and the six types of resilience they highlight:
Exposure to parks and other green spaces helps reduce and recover from physiological stress, restores attention and focus (see Attention Restoration Theory [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2016.1196155]), and improves cognitive performance. All three enhancing mental resilience.
Increase physical activity thereby improving physical resilience.
Pro-environmental behaviour and the anticipation and enjoyment of seeing interesting animals and plant could increase positive emotions and thereby improve emotional resilience.
Meeting family and friends outdoors, even at a safe distance, improves social cohesion and helps people feel connected, enhancing social resilience.
The authors end with arguing that investing - money, time and people - into building ‘natural resilience’ will be an investment in ‘human resilience’.
The pathways are fairly obvious from a health impact point of view but worth bearing in mind when thinking about the positive benefits and potential negative impacts of adding high quality green spaces and taking away both high quality and poor quality green spaces.
I find the idea of thinking about resilience in terms of, at least, six dimensions interesting. I’ve always found that resilience is one of those hard to define and slippery concepts like health and sustainability, which means slightly or very greatly different things to different people and in different times. I’m interested in how the authors define these six types or aspects of resilience.
I also not sure what they mean by pro-environmental behaviour. There is decent evidence that we, humans, are drawn to green and blue spaces, as some kind of biological and physiological response, that calms us and attracts us to be in natural surroundings and wild places. I don’t think that is what they mean here.
Further information on health impacts assessment of greenspace, see greenspace scotland’s ‘Health Impact Assessment of Greenspace: a guide’ which is also found in the Guides section of this website.
Source: Aerts, R., Vanlessen, N. And Honnay, O. (2021) *Exposure to green spaces may strengthen resilience and support mental health in the face of the covid-19 pandemic.* Available at: [https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1601.long] (Accessed: 29 June 2021). Open Access