{"id":6799,"date":"2016-10-28T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T06:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6799"},"modified":"2016-10-28T06:00:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T06:00:03","slug":"nature-childhood-health-and-life-pathways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/10\/28\/nature-childhood-health-and-life-pathways\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature, Childhood, Health and Life Pathways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In preparation for the Natural England meeting last week, I read the University of Essex's\u00a0<em>Nature, Childhood, Health and\u00a0Life Pathways<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.essex.ac.uk\/ces\/esu\/occ-papers.shtm\">report<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Pretty J, Angus C, Bain M, Barton J, Gladwell V, Hine R, Pilgrim S,\u00a0Sandercock S and Sellens M. 2009. Nature, Childhood, Health and Life Pathways. \u00a0Interdisciplinary Centre for Environment and Society Occasional Paper 2009-02. \u00a0University of Essex, UK<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here's an extract from the Executive Summary:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"... \u2018<em><strong>green exercise<\/strong><\/em>\u2019, comprising of activity in <strong><em>green places<\/em><\/strong> (in the presence of\u00a0nature), is predicted to lead to positive health outcomes, as well as to promote\u00a0ecological knowledge, foster social bonds and influence behavioural choices. \u00a0Research suggests that attention should be given to developing the use of <em><strong>green\u00a0exercise<\/strong><\/em> as a therapeutic intervention (<em><strong>green care<\/strong><\/em>), that planners and architects\u00a0should improve access to <em><strong>green space <\/strong><\/em>(<em><strong>green design<\/strong><\/em>), and that children should be\u00a0encouraged to spend more time engaging with nature and given opportunities to\u00a0learn in outdoor settings (<strong><em>green education<\/em><\/strong>). Some of the substantial mental\u00a0health challenges facing society and physical challenges arising from modern\u00a0diets and sedentary lifestyles could be addressed by increasing physical activity in\u00a0natural places. If children are encouraged and enabled to undertake more <em><strong>green\u00a0exercise<\/strong><\/em>, then they are more likely to have active exposure to nature embedded\u00a0in their lifestyle as adults and will reap the associated health benefits.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed \u2013 NB,\u00a0the <em><strong>emphasis<\/strong><\/em> is mine.<\/p>\n<p>I go along with the general thrust of this sort of argument: An appropriate amount of nutrtious\u00a0food and the right sort and amount of exercise in the open (ideally unpolluted) air (probably ideally with others)\u00a0is, generally speaking and other things being equal, good for you in all sorts of ways. \u00a0But why is there a need for all this\u00a0<em><strong>green jargon <\/strong><\/em>to make that point? \u00a0It surely impresses no one these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In preparation for the Natural England meeting last week, I read the University of Essex's\u00a0Nature, Childhood, Health and\u00a0Life Pathways report: Pretty J, Angus C, Bain M, Barton J, Gladwell V, Hine R, Pilgrim S,\u00a0Sandercock S and Sellens M. 2009. Nature,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}