A Guide to the Healthy Parks Healthy People Approach and Current Practices

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Connecting to Australia: place-attachment
bringing people closer to nature and culture
and improving their well-being
How Australians are connected to their local
natural and cultural environment and values
affects their health and well-being. Placeattachment
can translate into community
development and be used as a powerful means
for encouraging people to care for nature and
culture while improving their well-being and
support for parks and protected areas.
A range of Australian case studies were
presented and discussed, exploring cultural
heritage and natural places while highlighting
different ways to engage the community through
diverse mediums such as art and music.
Summary of session and discussion
There are multiple and overlapping benefits of
connecting children and families to nature for a
range of physical, social and cognitive benefits.
Place-attachment is the extent to which an
individual values or identifies with a particular
environmental setting.
‘Postcarding’ nature may be a threat –
characterising it as beautiful, glamorous and
pristine and as something you want to visit ‘one
day’. There is a need to keep nature realistic and
not make it too glamorous.
Place-attachment also has a positive benefit on
individual well-being. Park managers may foster
place attachment by investing in distinctive
attributes of the park, sentimental components
and activities.
There is a need to advocate against the fear of
having children outside – for example, the risk of
abduction is no greater today than many years ago.
Generational storytelling is a powerful way of
connecting children to places – and to ultimately
garner stewardship of protected areas.
On the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria,
community art projects such as mosaics,
soundscapes and large quilt projects (Earth
Blanket) have been used to engage the local
community, visitors and school students in the
national park, improving connection to place and
well-being.
In the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, a study has
shown that place-attachment influences proenvironmental
behaviours and well-being. The
four dimensions of place-attachment –
dependence, identity, affect (emotional bonds),
and social-bonding – all impact on proenvironment
behaviour as well as both individual
and social sense of well-being. The implication is
that park managers could use the validated
national park well-being scale to assess the
effectiveness of their programs.
Session manager
Rod Annear, Department of Parks and Wildlife, Western
Australia, Australia
Session contributors
– Griffin Longley, Natureplay WA, Australia - Natureplay:
Connecting kids to natural places benefits health,
cognition, social and emotional development and builds
resilience and stewardship for natural places.
– Stephen Brown, University of Sydney, Australia - Place
Attachment: enhancing and supporting connectivity to
special cultural heritage places within protected areas
– Jenny Macaffer, Mornington Peninsula Shire, Australia -
We are all earthlings (Humans and their relationship to the
earth)
– Ramkissoon Haywantee, Behaviour Works Australia,
Monash University, Australia - Place Attachment:
Pro-environmental behaviour and well-being in national
parks
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