New paper - Are the wealthy privileged when it comes to nature benefits?
In a paper led by Violeta Berdejo-Espinola and published today in Nature Cities, we study the health and well-being benefits of urban green spaces in Asuncion, the capital city of Paraguay. We surveyed hundreds of residents right across the socio-economic spectrum from those living in precarious situations in informal settlements to the wealthiest neighbourhoods.
We showed that socio-economically advantaged people are healthier when their neighbourhood is greener – this is the typical effect generally found in these sorts of studies and is cool, but not really newsworthy.
But what really surprised us was that among the poorest communities, having plenty of nature around where a person lives is actually correlated with *lower* health and wellbeing. This could be an important finding globally for how we provide and maintain nature spaces in the poorest areas of cities. Very few studies have ever included the very poorest neighbourhoods in a city – research has largely overlooked or excluded those people.
Examples of the living conditions of dwellers of the informal settlement ‘Bañado Norte’ located in the Asunción Bay in Asunción, Paraguay. Lots of green, but is it healthy? Photographs taken in August 2023 by Ákos Hájas.
Why might we have found this negative effect? It’s possible that marginalised communities are living in places that are green, but also dangerous – e.g. exposed to flood risk, heavy mosquito burdens etc. This creates health risks from proximity to nature that might outweigh the benefits. It’s also likely that green spaces in the poorest neighbourhoods are not maintained as well as those in wealthier neighbourhoods, thus not as beneficial to spend time in, e.g. with crime or lack of shade. Both of these effects are likely in any city around the world where there are extremely socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
The lessons are that we need to ensure green spaces in the most socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods are high quality, well maintained, and have low risks of environmental hazards such as flood, fire and pestilence. This is deeply challenging, because there are structural economic forces restricting people’s choices about where to live.