Social, environmental, economic, and health benefits of green spaces

From earliest times, human beings have had an association with the natural green space in the urban/peri-urban landscape. Not only have humans benefited from these natural green spaces for food, clothing and medicine, but natural green space has also enriched the daily lives of men. Although the importance of this relationship has long been recognised, it is only in recent times that an attempt was made to understand this relationship in the form of a people-natural green space-landscape paradigm and the impact that natural green space has on human behaviour and well being. This paper is the first step in a much longer process that will explore the benefits of natural green space that can be derived from such a relationship. It also examines how the dynamism of this paradigm can be influenced by a range of land and water reform, social, environmental, economic, and health issues.