Health, Equity, & the Economic Valuation of Nature

Human lives are increasingly devoid of nature. Human's time is currently spent mostly indoors, especially during and after the Covid-19 Pandemic, but nature, or exposure to nature, is good for human's minds and bodies. This is not conjecture, multiple studies have shown that contact with nature provides measurable benefits to mental and physical health.

One such research study in Korea was comprised of 30 pairs of twins. The twins were separated into two groups, one group spent an hour a day in the forest for one month, while the other twin sat indoors for the same amount of time. Every person in the nature group showed an improvement in their standing heart rate, blood pressure and blood sugar levels, while every person in the non-nature group, not only showed no improvement, but had increased brain activity in areas responsible for impulsivity and anxiety.

Exposure to nature has a positive impact on human health. However, to take nature as a treatment seriously, the impact of nature needs to be quantified and that is the problem. How is the impact of nature on human health quantified in an equitable way?

This StoryMap lays out the Integrative Capstone Project of Section 003 of the Columbia University Sustainability Management program, within the School of Professional Studies. Capstone 003 collaborated with OneNature and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), two nonprofit organizations to create a research database and conduct interviews, to provide further analysis of President Biden's Earth Day Executive Order, the National Strategy to Develop Statistics for Environmental Economic Decisions.

On Earth Day 2022, President Biden signed Executive Order 14072, Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies, to strengthen the United States’ forests, boost wildfire resilience, and combat global deforestation. As part of this Executive Order, the government will consult with State, local, Tribal and governmental authorities and agencies, as well as the private sector, non-profit organizations, labor unions, and other stakeholders, in order to pursue practical nature base solutions.

In the context of the Executive Order and related activities and initiatives, OneNature and IFAW are leading a coalition of non-governmental organizations that are engaging with the United States government to ensure that their natural capital valuation is appropriate and holistic. The recommendations of this capstone project will be used to inform the coalition's recommendations.

OneNature and IFAW believe that economic valuation is not the only measure of a thriving nation; that community well-being requires a wide scope of factors to indicate success. The importance of this more holistic approach to measuring societal prosperity is becoming accepted in many places around the world. The United States government’s effort to include a broader concept of the value of nature provides a significant opportunity to inform their work. This includes providing a better understanding of the role that nature plays in major economic and policy priorities, and the importance of more inclusive social and environmental policies centered around supporting nature and people in the United States.

OneNature and IFAW, together with their coalition, are focused on ensuring that the United States government holistically values the impact of nature and wildlife on human health. The Columbia University Capstone Project 003 team, made up of twelve graduate students in the Sustainability Management program, was commissioned by OneNature and IFAW to gather and analyze existing research and information to support their work.

In order to understand how all the moving parts of the work came together, it is important to note that President Biden’s Executive Order has three main pillars, summarized by the The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Climate and Environment team: “Account for nature”, “Know nature”, and “Grow nature”. These pillars highlight the important role of nature in the health of our nation’s communities, infrastructure, and economy.

The research and findings were categorized into three key categories: Health, Equity, and Economic Valuation. All of these topics were grounded in their relationship to nature as the overarching connection.

OneNature, IFAW, and the Columbia University team met together once a week throughout the course of the project. Early in the project, the scope of the project was focused on creating two primary deliverables, a research database and conducting interviews with relevant experts. One Nature, IFAW, and the Columbia University team used the collaboration time to track progress, discuss findings, and continue to refine the scope of the project.

After multiple conversations regarding what nature is, it became clear that a unique definition had to be created. The boundaries of the definition would be specific for the purposes of this project. This enabled the creation of search parameters and a narrow scope to keep the research relevant.

“What is distinctly not human or man-made outside the home, including urban and rural green space."

Once the definition of nature was approved by OneNature and IFAW, for the sake of this project, the Columbia University team was able to move on to the next phase of the project, developing the primary deliverables.

The first task was to create a searchable database with summaries of the literature related to health, equity, and/or economic valuation, all within the context of nature. The Columbia University team established a database team to conduct a keyword-based review and focused on international peer-reviewed academic journals in English that were current, in addition to electronic books, online books, and press releases. After 80+ peer reviewed papers were collected, the team widened the scope of the research to include related news and reports, or journal papers, with a focus on equity or indigenous people.

The second task of this project was focused on interviewing professionals and researchers that were experts in their fields to get additional data input to peer-reviewed literature. These interviews were conducted by the subsequent interview team within the broader Columbia University team. The combination of first hand accounts and primary sources enhanced the research.

The purpose of the searchable research database was to support the work of OneNature and IFAW on the Earth Day Executive Order. The searchable database provides dozens of resources for both of the organizations and their associated coalition. In order to make this tool most useful, the Columbia University team used the Airtable platform to create the most dynamic tool possible.

There were a total of 124 entries in the database.

Airtable is a cloud-based spreadsheet application that organizes and structures data. The online platform allows for multiple users to add entries simultaneously, and encourages collaboration. In addition to the foundational organizational capabilities of Airtable, such as filtering, categorization, and search functions, the software provides a number of other high-level features, which are detailed below.

After a demonstration of the functionality of Airtable was provided to the clients, they chose Airtable as the preferred platform to house the database, for its ability to link records to each other, as well as to automatically maintain dashboards, and organize and customize fields. The alternative, Google Sheets, was discarded, as it didn’t provide many of the features.

Airtable will allow OneNature and IFAW to easily sort and filter through all of the citations in the database to find what is most relevant and pertinent to them.

Airtable provides a number of features that enable it to be a more dynamic tool for the OneNature and IFAW. The ability to link tables, categorize papers, and search through all of the papers make it an exceptional platform for the clients. Below is a slideshow laying out the nuances of each of these features.

Below is a link to the final Airtable Database. Please feel free to go to the link and explore the results of the database!

The purpose of the interviews was to identify and connect with professionals and researchers working at the intersection of human health, nature, and equity to enhance the work of OneNature and IFAW by acquiring perspectives and information extending beyond the literature.

The Columbia University team carried out an investigation of researchers and health professionals that specialized in the intersection between human health and nature. From consulting the most cited authors in the database, to carrying out desk research, a thorough contact list was created, including contacts provided by the clients. 

There were a total of 51 contacts in the list.

The Columbia University team then created a pipeline with information about the universe of potential interviewees, including their organization or affiliation, their role, their contact information (email), their specialty or research focus, whether or not they had been contacted, whether or not they had responded to the interview request, and when the interview was scheduled for. The pipeline was regularly updated whenever there was response from any of the potential interviewees.

The final list of contacts and data collected, including all the recordings of the interviews and the corresponding transcripts, were organized in a shared folder accessible by the clients. Additionally, the interviews were organized on Airtable by name, organization or affiliation, role, contact information, specialities/key words, interview summary, and a link to the video interview and transcript. The full interviews, transcripts, and contact information were shared just with the clients for privacy and confidentiality.

However, below is a list and map of all of the interviews that were conducted and the location of where the interviewee resides.

After completing the database and conducting the key interviews, the Capstone 003 team summarized the key findings for each of the individual categories and the overlapping areas of interest. The key findings provide a more in depth analysis of the results from the research database and the conducted interviews.

Below is a link to the final report. Please feel free to go to the link and explore the formal results!

Through the research, not one source was found that successfully combined nature, health, equity, and economic value. However, within these categories and the intersections between them, there are areas for improvement. These gaps can be used to define future recommendations for OneNature and IFAW on how to account for nature in an equitable way.

There is a critical need to fill the research gap at the intersection of nature, health, equity, and economic valuation. This project helped identify exactly the nature of the gap by narrowing a broad, ambiguous sector into well-defined categories and the associated state of research available for them. This should help OneNature and IFAW effectively influence the US government’s initiative to value nature so that it offers a more holistic accounting of nature’s true impact.

As One Nature and IFAW approach this advocacy goal, the Columbia University team recommends balancing a holistic approach to valuing nature with one that can be easily calculated and understood.

Health, equity, and nature are deeply interconnected, and the loss of nature is measurably detrimental to societal well-being. Future conservation policy is highly dependent on the United States’ ability to holistically represent this value into the national accounts. OneNature and IFAW’s advocacy work can play a critical role in facilitating this. As OneNature and IFAW approach this advocacy goal, the Columbia University team recommends balancing a holistic approach to valuing nature with one that can be easily calculated and understood.

The complex interactions between equity, nature, and health cannot be boiled down into a number; this is the current state of research, and the future state of research will likely continue to have gaps. OneNature and IFAW should focus their efforts on identifying the highest impact natural assets, and advocate for placing higher values on those areas.