Trees are important for human health.
If this seems obvious, Robert Keen, CEO of the environmental nonprofit
Trees Ontario, would like to point out that it's a connection that gets overlooked.
"I think that people get that trees produce oxygen and take in carbon," says Keen. "But there are lots of other things that trees and forests do for us—for instances absorbing pollutants, cleaning the air, controlling flooding, purifying water, providing recreation space—that people don't think about."
That's why Trees Ontario hosted its first-ever experts forum this month, a multi-sectoral brainstorming session dedicated to exploring the connections between the natural environment and human health.
The forum stemmed from an earlier collaboration between Trees Ontario and John Howard, chair of the
Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). Earlier this year, Howard contributed to a Trees Ontario report,
A Healthy Dose of Green: A Prescription for a Healthy Population, which highlighted how even minor investment in forest restoration has significant impact on human health.
"One of the main recommendations that came from the report was to bring together a multidisciplinary group," says Keen. "We wanted to bring together folks with different backgrounds looking at these issues in order to brainstorm and strategize how we're really going to move this whole initiative forward."
The forum, which brought members of the medical community together with environmental groups and the forestry industry, is one of the first of its kind in Canada.
"We had over 50 stakeholders there," says Keen. "We had just a great response, there was a lot of positive energy. And we're now looking at putting together a working group to develop strategies and next steps in order to achieve some measurable objectives."
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Rob Keen, CEO, Trees Ontario