Blog by Dr Joelene Hughes, Senior Conservation Scientist, Dr Rebecca Jefferson, Senior Conservation Scientist, and Dr Richard Bradbury, Head of Environmental Research Section, RSPB Centre for Conservation Science
Human health and nature conservation organisations are exploring together how nature-based interventions might simultaneously achieve both human health/wellbeing and conservation benefits. However, successful collaborations rely on mutual understanding and achieving everyone’s aims.
In this joint study with researcher Tobit Emmens at Devon NHS Partnership Trust, we investigated how people from two different backgrounds (health care in Devon or conservation in RSPB) think about nature, their preferences for different nature interventions and whether, in a collaboration, all are set to gain.
In recent years, evidence has been increasing that nature is good for our health and wellbeing. Walking in greenspaces, watching birds, volunteering on reserves, enjoying sea views, and many other activities can improve our quality of life, sense of place, resilience, mental and physical health. Even having plants in the office is thought to help creativity and mental health.
Photo: Conservation volunteers hard at work removing invasive (but arguably pretty!) Himalayan Balsam from a watercourse at Middleton Lakes Nature Reserve in Staffordshire. (Photo credits, main photo: Katie Thorpe, RSPB Middleton Lakes, inset: Ben Hall (rspb-images.com)
However, people’s perceptions of “nature” can vary depending on experience, background and understanding. Ideas of what nature is can range from very broad - anything not man-made - to very restricted - only wilderness areas. Nature can be seen as beautiful and pleasant or threatening and dangerous. Is Himalayan balsam beautiful or threatening (or both)? Is seeing a bumblebee pleasant or frightening?
Because of different perceptions of nature, people are likely to have different ideas about what type of nature activity, or nature-based intervention, they would participate in. Furthermore, the degree to which people have their own health and wellbeing benefits or the benefits for nature as their primary outcome may also influence their preference for different interventions.
In two workshops with staff from the Trust and RSPB (i.e. people with a professional healthcare or conservation interest), we investigated perceptions of nature and then discussed the types of nature intervention they would like to see in a mental healthcare setting.
Comfortingly, people from health and conservation backgrounds had broadly overlapping perceptions of nature. However, there was a reminder that some aspects of nature can induce fear, which could negatively affect mental health and wellbeing. This reaction, which may affect people’s preferences for interventions, is one that conservationists could overlook.
We produced a list of 25 interventions identified in the workshops and then used an online questionnaire to ask local carers, patients, conservation charity members and organisation staff to vote for their preferred interventions, and whether they had any other suggestions. Using this feedback, we updated the list to the nine new suggestions and the top 10 ranked interventions, then sent it around again for more votes.
We therefore got a revised ranking, for 19 interventions. We then examined the differences between people’s preferences, based on whether they had a conservation or health background.
In a final workshop, 14 expert conservationists rated the 19 interventions on their benefit for nature conservation. Comparing the conservation benefits with the voted preferences gave us the best interventions – those that were both popular and had the best chance of benefitting nature.
On to the results, and it was interesting to find that the most favoured intervention (Box 1) was the same for people from health and conservation backgrounds.
More generally, both conservation and health people preferred what we framed as “mind-set” and “physical nature” interventions. The “mind-set” intervention reflected a broad perception that the health organisation did not value nature enough as a beneficial health resource. “Physical nature” interventions, in turn, were those that manifestly provided a direct benefit to nature, e.g. through increasing nesting resources for declining bird species – demonstrating that the need to benefit nature was also generally recognised.
The intervention that experts rated most highly for conservation benefit was the second most preferred by participants (Box 2). This is reassuring, given that not all the interventions that were identified had obvious conservation benefits.
Our results led us to the conclusion that, while there are encouraging areas of unity between health and conservation organisations, collaborations need to focus on good early communication. It is essential to establish mutual understanding about concepts of nature, especially the perceptions of threat and people’s barriers to engagement.
Great attention also needs to be paid to promoting the sub-set of interventions that engage and benefit people but, critically, also provide tangible, physical benefits to nature.
Reference: Joelene Hughes, Chris De Ruyck, Tobit Emmens, Richard B. Bradbury & Rebecca Jefferson (2019) In a mental-health care setting, can nature conservation and health priorities align? Journal of Interprofessional Care, DOI: 10.1080/13561820.2019.1621276