WCC 2016 Res 064 - Activity Report

NSW OEH presented a paper to the 2018 Community, Conservation and Livelihoods Conference in Canada on the use of a ‘5 captials’ approach at a World Heritage site to demonstrate how improving stakeholder values will also help protect outstanding universal values of the site.

NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Healthy Parks Healthy People Strategy is in development and will provide a framework to promote the health and wellbeing benefit of existing programs, evaluate outcomes for health and wellbeing and natural values, influence health policies and strategies to include reference to nature and manage national parks to maximize health and wellbeing benefits.

NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service is working with other NSW government agencies that manage parklands in Western Sydney to protect natural values and provide opportunities for people to experience natural places in an area of rapid urbanisation.

NSW OEH staff spoke at the ‘Nature is Good Medicine’ forum at the 2018 International Parks and Leisure Conference in Melbourne on the importance of connection to Country to health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people.

NSW Office of Environment and Heritage is providing input to the development and revision of NSW government strategies relating to health and active recreation to recognise the importance of nature and the contribution of facilities and services provided in National Parks to health and well-being of local communities.

The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage Corporate Strategy was released in 2018 and aims to ‘Connect Communities to Conservation and Culture’. It specifically recognises the contribution of a healthy environment to health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.

OEH has undertaken research to quantify the tourism and recreation value of all national parks in NSW (Heagney et al. 2018) and to identify key ‘socio-economic benefit pathways’ through which national parks can improve socio-economic wellbeing the surrounding local community (Heagney et al. 2015).

Heagney, E. C., M. Kovac, et al. (2015) "Socio‐economic benefits from protected areas in south-eastern Australia." Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12554
Heagney, E. C et al. (2018). "Optimising recreation services from protected areas–Understanding the role of natural values, built infrastructure and contextual factors." Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.10.007