CHI member and EOH PhD candidate, Greta Martin, CHI member and Associate Professor of EOH, Dr. Robert Canales, and CHI Director and Professor and Chair of EOH, Dr. Susan Anenberg, co-authored a new paper published in GeoHealth entitled, "Tracking Progress Toward Urban Nature Targets Using Landcover and Vegetation Indices: A Global Study for the 96 C40 Cities." This research evaluated the progress on declared green and blue space urban nature targets for 96 member-cities of C40 cities, a global network of Mayors committed to deep cuts in emissions to build healthy, equitable and resilient communities in the face of the climate crisis. These urban nature targets include: 1) increasing greenspace within a city; and, 2) increasing the percentage of the population that has access to green or blue spaces. Using high-resolution, globally available datasets, the authors showed that almost 80% of included cities met at least one target and almost 50% meet both targets. Furthermore, to prepare for future health impact assessments, the authors translated these urban nature targets into a metric to allow for the quantification of health benefits associated with meeting these goals.
Read the full paper here.