Quantifying Biophilia

量化亲生物性

• 批准号: NE/E009131/1
• 负责人: David Macdonald
• 金额: $ 6.97万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FE009131%2F1
• 关键词: Quantifying; Biophilia

The notion that spending time with 'nature' can reduce stress may seem self evident. Natural tonics have been prescribed throughout recorded history from Grecian healing groves to Victorian seaside resorts. More recently 'green exercise' has been prescribed by modern medical practitioners. The World Health Organisation predicts that stress will be the leading cause of ill health by 2020. If experience of nature can relieve that stress why is not more done about it? Like so many intuitive 'truths' however this assertion masks a complicated set of unanswered questions. The simplest and most difficult to answer being, 'why?'. In 1984 E.O. Wilson suggested that human affinity with wildlife is hereditary, borne of evolutionary pressures. Evidence has been produced to support this hypothesis. For example a cross-cultural preference for park-like areas, similar to the savannahs inhabited by our ancestors, exists. If love of nature is innate, or otherwise important to our physical or mental health, then understanding these effects will also be important in human health, biodiversity conservation and environmental policy. We are in the midst of an extinction crisis. For example, in 2004 the IUCN reported that one in four mammal species was under threat and half of these may be extinct within a decade. One estimate suggests that governments and NGO's are spending only around US$1 billion per year to combat the crisis. This amount will not reverse the decline; more importantly we know very little of the economic value of nature. Many people declare a 'love' for Nature, and behave as if they attribute value to it while the emotional health benefits are ignored by policy makers. The relationships between human physical and mental health and the natural environment, and the mechanisms involved is scientifically topical and of potentially far-reaching policy relevance. When environmental problems are quantified political will to tackle them can be greater. For example controls on CFCs to protect the Ozone layer are costly and require international agreement. Science demonstrated that the cost of restricting the use of CFCs was outweighed by the cost of inaction and increased skin cancer. This approach to managing the natural environment is in its infancy, but no less important. This topic is amenable to scientific study, but innovative thinking will be necessary to plan a quantitative, experimental approach involving a range of academic disciplines. The issue is particularly relevant in urban areas, where planners increasingly speculate on the benefits of green-spaces. We wish to quantify any health benefits from interacting with the natural environment, beyond for example exercise. This could shed light on evolutionary psychology, and provide economic arguments for biodiversity conservation that may benefit disproportionately the most disadvantaged in society. This goal surely necessitates quantitative and ideally experimental approaches. Insofar as the health consequences of interaction with the natural environment are often interpreted in terms of stress, stress is likely to be a focus of the emerging research. Fortunately, an array of techniques, from physiological to psychometric are available for this purpose, including one new approach, based on immuno-competence (the Leucocyte Coping Capacity) that repeat-ably and rapidly gives a measure of stress from only a pinprick of blood. Before this can be done we must identify the right questions and the order to answer them in. This will be the first task of the workshops we propose. Our group of international experts would then design experiments to provide evidence to help answer them. The ultimate goal of the workshops will be to integrate empirical measures of the relationship between human health and interaction with the natural environment within an inter-disciplinary framework to produce social and economic measures.

花费时间可以减轻压力的观念似乎是自我明显的。从希腊康复的树林到维多利亚海滨度假村的整个历史上，自然托管的规定。最近，现代医生开了“绿色练习”。世界卫生组织预测，到2020年，压力将成为不良健康的主要原因。如果自然的经验可以减轻这种压力，为什么对此没有更多的做法？就像许多直观的“真理”一样，这种断言掩盖了一组复杂的未解决问题。最简单，最难回答的是“为什么？”。 1984年E.O.威尔逊建议，人类与野生动植物的亲和力是遗传性的，是进化压力的。已经产生了证据来支持这一假设。例如，存在类似于公园的地区的跨文化偏好，类似于我们祖先居住的萨凡纳人。如果对自然的热爱是天生的，或者对我们的身心健康重要，那么理解这些影响也将在人类健康，生物多样性保护和环境政策中很重要。我们正处于灭绝危机之中。例如，在2004年，IUCN报告说，四分之一的哺乳动物受到威胁，其中一半可能在十年内灭绝。一项估计表明，政府和非政府组织每年仅支出约10亿美元来打击危机。这个数量不会扭转下降；更重要的是，我们对自然的经济价值一无所知。许多人宣布对自然的“爱”，并且表现得好像将价值归因于它，而政策制定者却忽略了情感健康益处。人类身心健康与自然环境之间的关系以及所涉及的机制在科学上是主题的，并且潜在的深远政策相关性。当量化环境问题时，解决方案的政治意志可能会更大。例如，对保护臭氧层的CFC的控件成本很高，需要国际协议。科学表明，限制使用CFC的成本超过了不作为和皮肤癌的成本。这种管理自然环境的方法仍处于起步阶段，但同样重要。该主题适合科学研究，但是对于计划涉及一系列学科的定量，实验方法，创新思维是必要的。这个问题在城市地区尤其重要，在城市地区，计划人员越来越多地推测绿色空间的好处。我们希望通过与自然环境互动（例如锻炼）来量化任何健康益处。这可能会阐明进化心理学，并为生物多样性保护提供经济论据，这可能使社会上最弱势群体受益。这个目标肯定需要定量和理想的实验方法。就与自然环境相互作用的健康后果经常以压力来解释，压力可能是新兴研究的重点。幸运的是，从生理到心理测量学的一系列技术可用于此目的，包括一种基于免疫能力（白细胞应对能力）的一种新方法，这些方法只能重复，迅速地衡量只有一根鲜血的压力。在完成此操作之前，我们必须确定正确的问题和回答问题的命令。这将是我们提出的研讨会的第一个任务。然后，我们的国际专家小组将设计实验以提供证据以帮助他们回答。研讨会的最终目标是将人类健康与与自然环境互动之间关系的经验衡量集成到产生社会和经济措施的跨学科框架内。