Restoring and protecting nature is a practical tool for climate adaptation, helping communities cope with extreme heat, flooding and other disruption linked to climate change. Crucially, it delivers powerful and immediate health benefits too. This means successful schemes improve people’s wellbeing and safety today, and also nurture long-term protection from climate change.
This is particularly important in schools, hospitals and community healthcare, where people may be more vulnerable because of age or illness. The suggestions and practical, proven examples below will help develop or refine work in this area. Councils and community groups can also improve health for local people by delivering or supporting similar projects.
Cooling schools and neighbourhoods
Hotter summers increase the risk of heat stress, worsen heart and lung conditions, disrupt sleep, and make everyday activities harder. This is particularly true for older people, children, and those already in poor health.Trees and vegetation absorb heat and create shade. Targeted interventions, like greener school grounds and “cool routes” for walking and cycling can reduce exposure where people most need relief.
Sheffield’s Built for Change Project supports schools to reduce emissions and improve resilience to extreme weather, including overheating and flooding. The programme is backed by £505,000 public health funding, with £21,000 grants for 12 schools in the area, plus sustainability audits, bespoke climate action plans and follow-on support.
One striking statistic is that reducing classroom temperature from 30°C to 20°C is expected to increase performance on learning-relevant tasks by 20%, helping classroom pupils engage more in schools. Natural solutions in this area include increasing tree coverage in and around school grounds. This helps cool outdoor spaces and reduces heat gain indoors through shading and evapotranspiration.
Covering roofs, walls and other building surfaces in vegetation also lower indoor thermal loads, and improve insulation. While natural green landscapes (such as rain gardens) help manage stormwater and reduce reflected heat. All these solutions can meaningfully lower peak temperatures inside classrooms while providing biodiversity and rainwater management benefits. Some will even create learning spaces that connect pupils to nature and climate education.
Reducing flooding and the health harms that come with it
Flooding causes injuries, long-term stress and trauma, damp and mould exposure, disrupted healthcare access, and financial costs for victims. Nature-based interventions that hold, slow and safely channel rainwater or floods can reduce some of these impacts. This is particularly important in areas where surface water flooding is becoming more frequent.
As well as cooling classrooms, Sheffield’s Built for Change project also addressed flooding and water waste management, with practical, site-based improvements for schools. Natural solutions to flooding included installation of sustainable drainage systems and rainwater gardens in school premises. Assessment of flooding problems at participating schools revealed that the maintenance of buildings and grounds was a key factor:so long-term upkeep must be built into any development plans.
Green spaces offer low-cost, high-impact health boost
Green spaces can support recovery from illness, reduce stress, help people get active and build social connections. This means that in healthcare settings, they’re not just a ‘nice to have’, but a practical interventionboosting public health.
Sow the City’s Prestwich Hospital Green Health Walk project is an accessible route through an existing green site, with seven ‘stations’ including an orchard, allotment, herb bed and native woodland. It was co-designed with staff and patients, after a thorough ecological assessment. Overall, this is a low-cost, high-impact way to increase patient’s engagement with nature in healthcare estates.
A Sow the City survey at another site, The Wythenshawe Hospital, found that 80% of healthcare staff strongly feel green spaces are important, and more than 70% of patients feel more relaxed when using them. So how can healthcare sites begin to act? A good place to start is mapping underused courtyards, paths and verges within their sites and improving access, seating and wayfinding in these areas.
Accessibility is key for Wildlife Trust health scheme
A great example of work linking climate and health is Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s Nature and Wellbeing Service. Activities at nature reserves, parks and allotments empower people to learn skills, build resilience, make friends, and improve their physical health and mental wellbeing. The service is run in partnership with Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation
Accessibility and removing barriers is key to the scheme’s success, particularly for those experiencing poor mental health, loneliness or low confidence. It has attracted participants from 13 to 88, coming via a wide range of routes including NHS mental health services, social prescribers and self-referral. The service offers a 3 to 6 month engagement period with travel costs reimbursed up to £8. Sessions are free, including refreshments, and there’s also support to accessing suitable clothing
Other community and nature groups can as well copy the Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s model in building a local referral pathway with social prescribers and deliver a time-limited programme to help people connect more with nature and improve mental wellbeing.
Nature-based solutions are well known for sequestering carbon, but these examples show how they can also solve the problems that face our communities now: heat stress, flooding, wellbeing, and unequal access to healthy natural spaces. What’s more, visible interventions at schools, hospitals and public sites help grow understanding of and support for this approach.
Inclusive, practical and well-maintained solutions of this kind are one of the most immediate, practical ways to protect public health in a changing climate.
