Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

There is increasing interest in the potential role of the natural environment in human health and well-being. However, the evidence-base for specific and direct health or well-being benefits of activity within natural compared to more synthetic environments has not been systematically assessed. We conducted a systematic review to collate and synthesise the findings of studies that compare measurements of health or well-being in natural and synthetic environments. Effect sizes of the differences between environments were calculated and meta-analysis used to synthesise data from studies measuring similar outcomes. Twenty-five studies met the review inclusion criteria. Most of these studies were crossover or controlled trials that investigated the effects of short-term exposure to each environment during a walk or run. This included 'natural' environments, such as public parks and green university campuses, and synthetic environments, such as indoor and outdoor built environments. The most common outcome measures were scores of different self-reported emotions. Based on these data, a meta-analysis provided some evidence of a positive benefit of a walk or run in a natural environment in comparison to a synthetic environment. There was also some support for greater attention after exposure to a natural environment but not after adjusting effect sizes for pretest differences. Meta-analysis of data on blood pressure and cortisol concentrations found less evidence of a consistent difference between environments across studies. Overall, the studies are suggestive that natural environments may have direct and positive impacts on well-being, but support the need for investment in further research on this question to understand the general significance for public health.

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A systematic review of evidence for the added benefits to health of exposure to natural environments

Society's response to climate change is inevitably mediated by culture. In a Review Article that analyses important new research from across the social sciences, climate change is shown to threaten important cultural dimensions of people's lives and livelihoods — including material and lived aspects of culture, identity, community cohesion and sense of place.

Cultural dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation

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Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development

Despite the enormous energy devoted to generating the right policy models in development, strangely little attention is given to the relationship between these models and the practices and events that they are expected to generate or legitimize. Focusing on the unfolding activities of a development project over more than ten years as it falls under different policy regimes, this article challenges the assumption that development practice is driven by policy, suggesting that the things that make for ‘good policy’ — policy which legitimizes and mobilizes political support — in reality make it rather unimplementable within its chosen institutions and regions. But although development practice is driven by a multi-layered complex of relationships and the culture of organizations rather than policy, development actors work hardest of all to maintain coherent representations of their actions as instances of authorized policy, because it is always in their interest to do so. The article places these observations within the wider context of the anthropology of development and reflects on the place, method and contribution of development ethnography.

Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice

Therapy by design: evaluating the UK hospital building program.

List of figures and tables general editor's introduction notes on contributors introduction, Morag Bell et al agents and agencies in geography and empire - the case of George Grey, James M.R. Cameron imperialism and the discourse of desiccation the institutionalisation of global environmental concerns and the role of the Royal Geographical Society, 1860-1880, Richard Grove imperial landscapes - photography, geography and British exploration, 1858-1872, James R. Ryan the Royal Dutch Geographical Society and the Dutch East Indies, 1873-1914, Paul van der Velde the provincial geographical societies in Britain, 1884-1914, John M. MacKenzie "The Mother of all the Peoples" - geographical knowledge and the empowering of Mary Slessor, Cheryl McEwan historical geographies of empire, Robin A. Butlin "Citizenship not charity" - Violet Markham on nature, society and the state in Britain and South Africa, Morag Bell the spoils of war - the societe de geographie de Paris and the French empire, 1916-1919, Michael J. Heffernan geopolitics, cartography and geographical knowledge - envisioning Africa from Italy, David Atkinson the cartography of colonialism and decolonialism - the case of Swaziland, Jeffrey C. Stone.

Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940

Of plagues, planes and politics: Controlling the global spread of infectious diseases by air.

In the post Cold War era, issues of poverty, inequality and social exclusion have become central to many of the key discussions of international relations and development aid. In this context, this article sets out to analyse the nature and specificity of the development strategy of the New Labour government in Britain, as it has evolved since 1997. In the setting of the literatures on post-colonialism, aid and development, the authors examine the specific concepts and approaches that help to frame such a strategy, giving particular attention to the commonalities and divergences between the British Government’s 1997 and 2000 White Papers. The perspective used connects ideas and issues from domains of knowledge which tend to remain independent of each other, namely aid and development studies and post-colonial theory. Situated on the terrain of aid and development, the guiding objective of the article is to raise certain questions concerning power, knowledge and geopolitics, so that a wider conceptual and policy-oriented debate might be engendered.

Morag Bell

Papers

Therapy by design: evaluating the UK hospital building program.

Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940

Of plagues, planes and politics: Controlling the global spread of infectious diseases by air.

Aid and the Geopolitics of the Post‐Colonial: Critical Reflections on New Labour’s Overseas Development Strategy

Imperial or postcolonial governance? Dissecting the genealogy of a global public health strategy.