Increase access to nature in all daily environments and in education

Although access to nature is a basic human right, people’s actual use of green spaces is subject to inequalities. A Kobe University-led research team analyzed what conditions make it more likely that people are exposed to nature across generations: the availability of green spaces around where they live, work and shop, as well as nature relatedness and past natural experiences. Their findings may inform policies for urban planning and education for the improvement of human health.

Visiting green spaces is good for people’s health, both psychologically and physiologically. However, how often people use green spaces is not equal and has been the topic of discussion in the fields of urban planning and regional governance. Research has focused mainly on the availability of green spaces around residential areas and the connection with socioeconomic factors. The Kobe University human environmental scientist UCHIYAMA Yuta explains, “Even though the access to quality natural environments is a basic human right, it tends to be treated as low-priority issue because policy makers think that it can be addressed indirectly through economic growth.”

Uchiyama and his team thus conducted a survey in the two largest metro areas of Japan, the Kanto region around Tokyo and the Kansai region including Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. In the survey, they asked 3,500 people about how often and where they visit green spaces as well as where they live, work, and shop, basic socioeconomic factors such as age, gender and household income, and about their nature relatedness and the availability of free time. In addition, they used publicly available geographic data to correlate the collected responses with the size and shape of green spaces around the respondents’ daily environments. The Kobe University lead author says: “I felt the need to focus on daily life in general because of my personal experience. Both now and in my childhood, encountering plants and animals (even wild boars on campus) on my way to work, school, or shopping lets me feel the seasons and forget my daily life for a moment. Thus, an integrated understanding of these various aspects is necessary.”

Their results, published in the Journal of Environmental Management, show that people use green spaces more if they are available throughout their daily environments, not just around where they live. The Kobe University researcher says: “This result can be used as evidence for policy making, especially in the fields of environmental management and urban planning, as there is potential for the utility of green spaces not only around residential areas but throughout people’s daily environments.” The results also showed that another very consistent factor driving visits to nature is people’s childhood nature experience and nature relatedness, and that nature relatedness was stronger the older the respondents were. “This shows how important effective environmental education for all generations is,” says Uchiyama.

However, the baseline for such policies is different in monsoon Asia compared to urban areas in North America and Europe. Uchiyama explains, “Cities in East and Southeast Asia are more mixed with rural areas than those in Europe and North America; in other words, the distance between urban and rural areas is closer, and there is no clear division between them.” In Japan, such a complex landscape is called “satoyama landscape,” and it is still a typical sight in the outskirts of metropoles such as Tokyo and Osaka. In fact, the results of Uchiyama’s research also show that being close to agricultural land and green spaces with complex shapes correlates well with the frequency of people’s use of green spaces, indicating the importance of these landscapes.

The human environmental scientist has his eyes on the larger picture: “In our ongoing research, we are focusing also on health outcomes which correlate with nature visits and we use big data approaches such as mobile phone GPS data to trace where and for how long people are actually exposed to green spaces. In the end, I would like for our research to contribute to policies reducing the unequal access to nature, which we believe is a root cause of other social and environmental issues. After all, access to nature is a basic human right.”

This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grants 22H03813 and 23H03605) and the Ministry of the Environment, Japan (grant 1FS-2201). It was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of the Ryukyus, Meio University and Kyoto University.

Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with nearly 16,000 students and nearly 1,700 faculty in 10 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.