Linkages between the urban forest and the health and well-being of inhabitants in a Latin American urbanizing region

Background/Question/Methods

Contributions of nature in human health and well-being are increasingly been researched in disciplines from public health to ecology. However, evidence on the different pathways in which this relationship occurs is still lacking. Following Marzeille et al. (2021) we quantify four pathways related to nature exposure and experience including, i) reducing harm by quantifying regulating ecosystem services, ii) restoring capacity by quantifying cultural services in relation to mental health improvement, iii) building capacity by understanding the use of nature; and iv) causing harm by quantifying disservices. We apply this framework in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile. Focusing on sampled data from urban forests in 120 green spaces and 2800 people surveyed from 52 municipalities we quantify the relations between nature exposure and experience and how that occurs in relation to environmental, individual and socio-cultural moderators. We quantify four regulating ecosystem services, frequency, use and activities in green spaces, accessibility, quality of those green spaces and the diversity of birds supported by those green spaces to account for the framework variables. We were able to identify type of nature users and necessities from those users to support future planning for improving health and well-being in a Latin America urbanizing city.

Results/Conclusions

We identified different users of nature that followed similar patterns along all the studied sociodemographic range. Most pathways of nature contribution to human health and well-being are moderated by socioeconomics and age at the individual level, while accessibility and urban forest species were identified as environmental moderators. The reducing and causing harm pathways are very local and determine also by local governments more than individual characteristics, related to the segregated nature of Latin American cities. The restoring and building capacities can be overcome through mobility of people looking for ‘better’ nature, however sustainable and resilient cities should be planning for democratizing nature and make good quality and quantity of nature equally available for all. Exposure and experience of nature showed to have different relation with people’s health and well-being, where people spending at least once a week during 1 or 2 hours in nature contemplating have a positive relation to less amount of stress and anxiety. While people in areas with a larger abundance of allergenic trees and visiting less nature tend to have worst physical health. Efforts should be put on maintaining a healthy and well distributed urban forest in order to positively impact urban inhabitants quality of life.