Speaker: Ali Chauvenet
Abstract
Mental wellbeing is emerging as a service from nature to society. Worldwide, countries are starting to look at nature-based therapy approaches to supplement mainstream healthcare. Australia, however, is lagging behind on nature-based opportunities for wellbeing, despite support from the public and health practitioners. Further, while green spaces are one of the few free community resources available to all, up to 30% of the population do not visit them regularly. In the midst of contemporary environmental and mental health crises, mental wellbeing has the potential to deliver benefits for both people and nature by linking individual interests to large-scale environmental concerns. In this talk, I will discuss our research on measuring mental-wellbeing benefits for people visiting parks, a framework for the economic valuation of these benefits, and reasons that people have unequal access to such vital benefits.
Brief Bio
Dr Ali Chauvenet is an Associate Professor in the School of Environment and Science at Griffith University, and a member of both the Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security and the Griffith Centre for Mental Health. Her background is in ecology and conservation science, and she is a self-confessed data and stats nerd. Her current research focuses on the benefits of protecting nature for human wellbeing via an interdisciplinary approach combining conservation, psychology, and ecological economics.
27 сен 2024
