This chapter is part of the report 'EU research & innovation for and with cities' that provides an overview of the main EU Research and Innovation (R&I) actions for and with cities to help them accelerate their transition towards sustainability and climate neutrality.
INHERIT (INter-sectoral Health and Environment Research for InnovaTion) is about stimulating effective policies, practices and innovations that address key environmental stressors of health and the underlying causes of health inequity. This Horizon 2020 research project (2016-2019) aims to encourage us to modify our current lifestyles, characterized by a ‘take, make, consume, dispose’ models of growth, to formulate scenarios for a more sustainable future, and to design, implement and test inter-sectoral initiatives to achieve the desired change.
INHERIT is a four-year (2016-2019) Horizon 2020 research initiative funded by the European Commission, bringing together 18 partners from across Europe. It aims to stimulate effective policies, practices and innovations that simultaneously restore the environment, whilst promoting health and health equity – in other words, that enable a ‘triple-win’.
INHERIT focuses on the areas of living (green space and energy efficient housing), moving (active transport) and consuming (food consumption and production), encouraging us to modify our current lifestyles, char- acterised by a ‘take, make, consume, dispose’ model of growth. INHERIT has formulated scenarios for a more sustainable future and has designed, implemented and tested intersectoral initiatives to achieve the triple-win.
This booklet brings together the results of the four-year initiative, which are relevant to professionals across different sectors (health, environment, food, education, energy, transport, etc.), to policymakers at EU, national, regional and local level, and to individuals across generations who can be inspired to take action.
BlueHealth has increased understanding of how urban blue spaces can affect people’s wellbeing. The majority of Europe’s population live in urban areas characterised by inland waterways and coastal margins. Our interdisciplinary research has combined large-scale survey data with localised interventions to understand the effects these environments might have on health. We have worked with communities, private sector organisations and policymakers to ensure our findings are focused and relevant. Our recommendations will help decision makers and communities promote health through access to good quality blue spaces, informing the development of towns and cities fit for the future. This project started in January 2016 and finished in December 2020.
The majority of Europe’s population lives in cities which have either developed along major rivers, been founded on the banks of inland lakes, or grown on the continent’s extensive coastline.
These ‘blue’ environments have played a major role in both the historical and modern evolution of our urban areas. They have been used for supplying drinking water, transportation, industry, fisheries, energy generation and sewage treatment.
Several years ago, a new body of evidence suggested that this utilitarian network of urban ‘blue infrastructure’ might also be able to provide a number of health and wellbeing benefits. However, there hadn’t been a concerted attempt to characterise and quantify these effects.
To address this, BlueHealth brought together researchers from across Europe to systematically explore the impacts that urban waterways can have on health.
Between 2016 and 2020 we conducted over 20 studies in more than 18 different countries across the world.
Our team has designed and implemented interventions at several sites in Spain, Italy, Estonia, Portugal, and the UK. We have created a series of tools to assess these initiatives, and developed protocols for others to do the same.
Our researchers have been at the forefront of new technologies, using virtual reality to bring blue space experiences to those who cannot access them. We have conducted workshops in cities across Europe, and developed scenarios to plan for the future.
In the biggest study of its kind ever conducted, we surveyed over 18,000 people across Europe to uncover population-level relationships between blue spaces and health. We’ve also joined different databases to create new sources of information and analysis.