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

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Responding to the effects of climate change
on communities, parks and protected areas
How does a changing climate affect the
management of parks and protected areas? How
will the responses impact on communities and
their interaction with nature?
This discussion was led by a panel of business,
health, park and protected area leaders. They
explored the challenges and innovative ways of
managing healthy parks to ensure community
safety and explored ways to tackle natural
disasters and extremes in a changing climate,
including the role of new technologies in
improving park management and connection
with communities.
Summary of session and discussion
There is a lack of certainty with climate change
so the ability to adapt will be more important
than the ability to predict.
The impact of climate change on humans is felt
through changes in ecosystems and biodiversity.
Protected areas are helping society to adapt to
climate change by conserving biodiversity and
supporting ecosystem services. About 40 per cent
of the world’s forests are located in protected
areas or community conserved areas. Old growth
forests are more valuable in storing carbon than
new fast growing forests. Therefore, large trees
are especially valuable in mitigating climate change.
Understanding, measuring and choosing forms of
risk adaptation will be essential. Parks and
protected areas can be places to demonstrate
and interpret climate change. Climate change is
complex and parks can play a role to break it
down and make it real for people to better
understand. Protected area managers can role
model climate change mitigation actions.
The impact of climate change is also being felt by
a dramatic increase in natural disasters. For example,
we are seeing more serious and major bushfires
in many parts of the world. Science is being used
to inform values-based decision making where
communities are engaged in understanding the
risk and developing the solutions.
Climate change also poses risks and opportunities
to public health. Climate change will lead to an
increase in extreme events such as heat waves
and place pressure on the health system. There is
the opportunity to consider the health benefits of
cleaner energy in offsetting carbon emissions costs.
Now is the time to actively engage with technology
as we respond to natural disasters and climate
change impacts. Changes in society are already
happening and people want to be connected and
use technology, such as social media, in
emergency situations. There is a challenge for
telecommunications and protected area managers
in building connectivity in remote areas where
many of the disasters will occur. There will be 30
billion devices connected by 2020 so we need to
identify the opportunities to connect with people
and get information out to the community and
make a difference in public safety.
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