Eindexamen Engels havo 2025, tijdvak 2: vragen en antwoorden

Re “Let’s Get Excited About Maintenance!” by Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel (Sunday Review, July 23):

While I agree wholeheartedly that maintenance is the neglected stepchild of infrastructure, I also think that we place a skewed value on catastrophic risks that may seem remote but are costly when they do occur.

Somehow the immediate reward of “cutting costs” is more enticing than the uncertain reward of prevention. It doesn’t feel like a reward because if you do it right, nothing happens.

Perhaps fear of future pain is not as strong as the impulsive desire for savings today. So we kick the can down the road and hope that the mess ends up in someone else’s lap.

REBECCA FIRESTONE
OAKLAND, CALIF.

nytimes.com, 2017

Let op: beantwoord een open vraag altijd in het Nederlands, behalve als het anders is aangegeven. Als je in het Engels antwoordt, levert dat 0 punten op.

by David Robson

1 Think back to the last time you failed or made an important mistake. Do you still blush with shame, and scold yourself for having been so stupid or selfish? Do you tend to feel alone in that failure, as if you were the only person to have erred? Or do you accept that error is a part of being human, and try to talk to yourself with care and tenderness?

2 For many people, the most harshly judgemental responses are the most natural. Indeed, ___ (2-1) as a sign of our ambition and resolution to be our best possible self. But ___ (2-2) – badly. Besides increasing our unhappiness and stress levels, it can increase procrastination, and makes us even less able to achieve our goals in the future.

3 Instead of chastising ourselves, ___ (2-3): greater forgiveness of our mistakes, and a deliberate effort to take care of ourselves throughout times of disappointment or embarrassment. “Most of us have a good friend in our lives, who is kind of unconditionally supportive,” says Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who has pioneered this research. “But you also need to learn to be that same warm, supportive friend to yourself.”

4 If you are a cynic, you may initially baulk at the idea. Yet the scientific evidence suggests it can increase our emotional resilience and improve our health, wellbeing and productivity. Importantly, ___ (2-4) that caused our upset in the first place.

bbc.com, 2021

While I am certainly not in the anti-cycling lobby, I ___ (3) Jude Wilkinson’s claim (Letters, 14 December) that the use of cars has led to the isolation and impoverishment of elderly people. As an active 70-year-old, I play table tennis and bowls, as well as having less active hobbies such as bridge. I am also a volunteer for a local hospice, providing at-home listening support for patients, carers and bereaved people across the local area – usually in small villages. I don’t live in a city but, like my clients, in a small village with limited public transport, and even that is only at limited times to very specific places in local towns.

If I did not have a car I simply could not access any of the above activities, which would lead to considerable isolation and impoverishment, both for me and my hospice clients, and would also lead to the closure of most small village bowls clubs, which are often located in hard-to-access places.

Those who claim a life without cars is easy and healthier are almost all ___ (4), and don’t realise how few transport options are available to those of us in rural areas.

Jill Wallis
Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire

theguardian.com, 2021

1 Sorry Dan, but it’s no longer necessary for a human to serve as CEO of this company. I like you, Dan, I really do. You’ve been the face of this company for many years, overseeing a period of unprecedented net growth. And on a more personal level, you’ve become a dear friend. Heck, our wives attend spin class together twice a week! But unfortunately, friendship only means so much in today’s cutthroat business environment. We – that is, the board and I – have pored over every possible budgetary alteration, and we just can’t conceive of a scenario in which retaining your services makes logistical sense. All the research we’ve conducted behind your back over the last three years suggests that the position of chief executive officer for our multi-billion dollar corporation can be more efficiently performed by a robot.

2 Effective immediately, you have been relieved of your duties. ROB-X164, seated to your left, will be sworn in as your replacement, with a formal announcement coming this afternoon. While we’re sure this is quite a shock to you right now, we do believe that in time you will accept that this decision is in the best interest of the company.

3 In your present state of fury, you’re probably wondering, “What makes ROB so special?” The short answer? Everything. We see in ROB a more personable, less error-prone version of you. In our trial runs, he’s performed admirably, demonstrating unparalleled adeptness in strategizing, team-building, allocating, internally storing frozen foods, and launching fastballs in excess of 200 miles per hour. What we’re talking about here is someone who can guide this company to unscaled heights, not to mention its first corporate league softball championship in thirteen years.

4 ROB has proven himself to be quite the workaholic. It’s a never-ending cycle of productivity with this guy – there’s no taking off for sick days, vacation, or even sleep. There’s also no division of commitment to worry about. No wife, no kids, no embarrassing problems. In other words, he’s not burdened with the distractions that plague sentient beings. He completes tasks at astounding rates – rates you simply can’t compete with.

5 If you’re still not convinced of ROB’s utter superiority in every conceivable facet, take a gander at these visual aids:

• Here’s a photo of ROB shaking hands with a prominent shareholder. What a grip!
• Here’s a chart of our projected earnings over the next five years. Notice the sharp upward spike at the chart’s left extreme. That signifies the moment you exit the building, which should occur within the next seven minutes.
• Observe the accompanying GIF: a smiling baby perpetually surfing through waves and waves of cash. We expect the company’s future to closely resemble this image.
• And here’s my favorite. As you can see, it’s an oil painting of ROB embracing me in his arms, lifting me up to the heavens as I triumphantly hoist the corporate softball league championship trophy. You may have noticed that the year engraved on the trophy is outdated. Unfortunately, ROB was still in beta testing last season.

6 Look, Dan, this is a tough break for you, no doubt. It’s not every day you’re told that your job – which your entire sense of self-worth hinges upon – can be better managed by a series of interconnected chips and wires concealed beneath a shiny, metallic exterior. In fact, it’s really only one day that this happens, and that day is today, so things can’t get much worse for you going forward. Take comfort in that.

7 Please be sure to hand your office keys over to HR on your way out. And Dan, lest you suspect that this is some sort of calculated, vindictive act on my part, trust me when I say that this decision has nothing to do with you hitting that ball that cost us the championship game four years ago. Absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

mcsweeneys.net, 2014

‘this decision has nothing to do with you hitting that ball that cost us the championship game four years ago.’ (alinea 7)

By Dr. Adam Frank

1 This month the TV news program “60 Minutes” ran a segment on recent sightings by Navy pilots of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The pilots’ accounts were bolstered by videos recorded by cameras on board their planes that captured what the government now calls “unidentified aerial phenomena.” In the wake of these enigmatic encounters, people are asking me what I think about UFOs and aliens.

2 I understand that UFO sightings, which date back at least to 1947, are synonymous in the popular imagination with evidence of extraterrestrials. But scientifically speaking, there is little to warrant that connection. There are excellent reasons to search for extraterrestrial life, but there are equally excellent reasons not to conclude that we have found evidence of it with UFO sightings.

3 Let’s start with the Navy cases. Some of the pilots have told of seeing flying objects shaped like Tic Tacs or other unusual forms. The recordings from the planes’ cameras show amorphous shapes moving in surprising ways, including appearing to skim the ocean’s surface and then disappear beneath it. This might appear to be evidence of extraterrestrial technology that can defy the laws of physics as we understand them – but in reality ___ (9).

4 For one thing, first-person accounts, which are notoriously inaccurate to begin with, don’t provide enough information for an empirical investigation. Scientists can’t accurately gauge distances or velocity from a pilot’s testimony: “It looked close” or “It was moving really fast” is too vague. What a scientist needs are precise measurements from multiple viewpoints provided by devices that register various wavelengths (visible, infrared, radar). That kind of data might tell us if an object’s motion required engines or materials that we Earthlings don’t possess.

5 Perhaps the videos offer that kind of data? Sadly, no. While some researchers have used the footage to make simple estimates of the accelerations and other flight characteristics of the UFOs, the results have been mixed at best. Skeptics have already shown that some of the motions seen in the videos (like the ocean skimming) may be artifacts of the cameras’ optics and tracking systems.

6 There are also ___ (11) objections. If we are being frequently visited by aliens, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn and announce themselves? There is a recurring narrative, perhaps best exemplified by the TV show “The X-Files,” that these creatures have some mysterious reason to remain hidden from us. But if the mission of these aliens ___ (12), they seem surprisingly incompetent. You would think that creatures technologically capable of traversing the mind-boggling distances between the stars would also know how to turn off their high beams at night and to elude our primitive infrared cameras.

7 Don’t get me wrong: I’ll read with great interest the U.S. intelligence report about UFOs that is scheduled to be delivered to Congress in June; I believe that UFO phenomena should be investigated using the best tools of science and with complete transparency. But there may be more mundane explanations. For example, it’s possible that UFOs are drones deployed by rivals like Russia and China to examine our defenses – luring our pilots into turning on their radar and other detectors, thus revealing our electronic intelligence capacities. The United States once used a similar strategy to test the sensitivities of Soviet radar systems. This hypothesis might sound far-fetched, but it is less extreme than positing a visit from extraterrestrials.

8 What’s most frustrating about the UFOs story is that it obscures the fact that scientists like me and my colleagues are on the threshold of gathering data that may be relevant to the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. But this evidence involves subtle findings about phenomena far away in the galaxy – not sensational findings just a few miles away in our own atmosphere.

9 Powerful telescopes that will soon be operational may be capable of detecting city lights on the night side of planets that orbit distant stars or the telltale mark of reflected light from planetwide solar-collecting arrays or the distinctive sign of industrial chemicals in a planet’s atmosphere. All of these “technosignatures,” should we find evidence of them, will be small effects. If we do detect such things, you better believe that my colleagues and I will go to extraordinary lengths to eliminate every possible source of error and every possible alternative explanation. This will take time and careful effort.

10 ___ (15) But that is the price we pay because we don’t just want to believe. We want to know.

newyorktimes.com, 2021

De volgende alinea is weggelaten in de tekst.

I’m an astrophysicist who is involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. My colleagues and I were recently awarded one of the first NASA grants to look for signs of advanced technology on planets outside our solar system. I have argued in these pages that the 10 billion trillion habitable planets that we now believe exist in the universe make extraterrestrial civilizations far more likely.

1 A University of Massachusetts Amherst biomedical informatician will use a $436,836 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore the use of “serious games” played independently on computer tablets to improve brain function in older people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

2 Sunghoon Ivan Lee, assistant professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences, aims to develop a human-centered platform that can motivate patients to stick to a therapeutic regimen of mobile game-playing at home on their own. Neuro-World, a collection of six games developed by Lee’s industrial partner in South Korea, Woorisoft, is designed to stimulate working – or short-term – memory and selective attention.

3 People with MCI experience cognitive decline beyond what’s expected from normal aging, but not severe enough to significantly interfere with their daily activities. “There aren’t many solutions to stimulate cognitive ability in people with cognitive disabilities, especially in their homes, outside clinical settings,” says Lee, whose research focuses on designing and implementing mobile-health (mHealth) technologies that address the practical needs of people with motor or cognitive impairments. The goals of therapeutic treatments for MCI are to slow down the progression of the disease and lessen the impact of symptoms, preferably with nonpharmacological interventions like serious games because they are low cost, non-invasive, safe and without adverse side effects.

4 Lee’s work addresses a key challenge of serious games in healthcare – developing a system that doesn’t require substantial involvement of trained caregivers and clinicians to oversee and motivate patients to follow the game protocol. Lee was introduced to Neuro-World by Hee-Tae Jung, a former post-doctoral researcher Lee had supervised at UMass Amherst. “I was intrigued by the Neuro-World concept and the science behind it,” Lee says.

5 In a small pilot study with stroke survivors to validate the efficacy of the system, Lee, Jung and colleagues found that Neuro-World games were capable not only of improving patients’ cognitive function but predicting the expected improvement, based on an analysis of their game performance. “We hope that knowing playing games can improve their cognitive function can further motivate patients to play more games,” Lee says.

6 Using the NIH funding, researchers at UMass Amherst, University of Montreal and Rutgers will conduct a study with 50 people diagnosed with MCI. Half will be asked to play the video games for 30 minutes twice a week for 12 weeks. The other half will not play the Neuro-World games. Both groups will also receive conventional therapy.

7 In addition to evaluating the ability of game-playing to improve cognitive function, researchers also aim to develop machine learning-based algorithms to predict cognitive function from the game performance. Finally, Lee and colleagues will conduct in-depth interviews with participants to understand their experiences with the games. They will use that information to optimize the system’s design in an effort to maximize patients’ participation with the game-based training.

8 “We thought people with MCI would be the population that could really benefit from serious games – before they move into a more serious condition like dementia or Alzheimer’s,” Lee says. He hopes the study will advance the research and expand the options for effective, safe and low-cost mHealth therapies for people with cognitive impairments.

9 “We believe that outcomes of this project will open a new door leading to previously unexplored datasets and understanding of patient-technology interactions to promote positive behavior changes to enable self-administered, serious game-based cognitive training,” Lee says. “And that can form the basis of a wide range of future investigations of rehabilitation and personalized disease management.”

umass.edu

‘A University of Massachusetts Amherst biomedical informatician will use a $436,836 grant’ (paragraph 1)

by Chris Deerin

1 If you want to write something that sells, write nature. The bookshop shelves are rammed with tomes about walking in the countryside, stopping to sniff the flora and fondle the fauna, taking time out of your hectic dash to the grave in order to appreciate Mother Earth’s glorious bounty.

2 Then there’s its evil twin, climate change – endless books telling us how to live and how not to, that predict a fiery end regardless of what we might now do, and that guilt us for every plastic food container we toss into the wrong-coloured bin.

3 Fiction never misses an opportunity. There are reams of post-apocalyptic novels that take as their starting point the careless carbon-death of society. In the hands of lesser writers, these books are awful: heavy-handed parables, so ornately miserable they leave you cheering on the prospect of mass extinction. The best, though – think of Richard Power’s much-praised The Overstory – grab and haunt you.

4 There are parts of Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under The Sun that reveal a young author of mesmerising talent. She takes a familiar trope – novelist goes to Hollywood, has bad time, leaves jaded, cynical and considering a job in IT – and breathes witty, catty life into it. Patrick Namlin is the writer who finds himself working as a PA (production assistant, but actually more like a personal assistant) on the filming of his own novel.

5 An introspective, sensitive type, as writers tend to be, he lands among a horrendous crew – particularly Brenda and Jay, the showbiz producers who seem to be using the movie as a front for something else, and actress Cassidy Carter, a beautiful, unhinged former child star who has spectacularly failed to grow up. Around them, the LA scrubland is permanently on fire, its simmering, ongoing collapse accepted as a fact of life. Water has become a rare commodity, and is sold as WAT-R. Meanwhile a new form of dementia seems to be randomly claiming people, young and old. The book’s mystery is a relatively simple one: is there something in the WAT-R?

6 Kleeman’s prose snaps and crackles. On first meeting, Namlin is bewitched by Cassidy’s delicate nose: “It was the sort of nose that reminded you at first of other noses you had loved in days gone by, but then began by degrees to eclipse those other noses, until all you could remember was this new nose, perfect and organic and whole.” The author has a dry, Chandler-esque wit.

7 But writers seemingly can’t help themselves when it comes to nature. The Overstory’s failing is that Powers luxuriates too much in lengthy, florid depictions of trees and flowers and grasses, and Kleeman falls prey to the same sin. Something New’s final section is ___ (25) – the novel might be subtitled “A thousand different ways to describe wildfire” – and, fatally, the reader’s attention wanders. A shame, because this is otherwise a fantastic read.

Something New Under The Sun by Alexandra Kleeman is out now (4th Estate, £14.99)

The Big Issue, 2021

‘If you want to write something that sells, write nature.’ (alinea 1)

David Seymour’s Right Uppercut (“Gold Cards take public for a ride”, Focus, January 15) is so far off the mark I am surprised he did not fly over the ropes, and a good example of single issue thinking leading to severe unintended consequences. How much more would we have to pay out in mental health and medical care for older people trapped in their rooms by limited finance and slowly sinking into the depths of depression?

Sure there are a few on the Waiheke ferry and it is probably the best therapy they will ever get. How about the elder who could either afford to ride the bus to town and then do nothing, or use their Gold Card to get to town and spend the saved fare supporting a local business? ___ (26-1)
Steve Jenkins, Wellington

Long live the Gold Card. Can we remind all our MPs that approximately 700,000 over-50s in New Zealand vote. ___ (26-2)
Mate Marinovich, President, Waitakere Grey Power Association

Has Seymour ever seen elderly people struggle against the disability of age to get on a bus so they can go shopping or visit a friend? Without the Gold Card they’d be isolated at home. Seymour’s more concerned about his wealthy mates having to chip in to help these disadvantaged members of our community. ___ (26-3)
Vincent Matthews, Auckland

Sunday Star Times, 2017

1 In the early days of the pandemic, the celebrity trainer and nutritionist Harley Pasternak bought a chest freezer for his backyard. At the time, Mr. Pasternak, 48, who works with Ariana Grande, Maude Apatow and H.E.R., thought he might need it to store extra food. But when the grocery stores in West Hollywood stayed open, he converted the freezer into a makeshift cold plunge: a tank of icy cold water that he could dip into for a few minutes a day to ease his back pain and anxiety. “It’s horrible for the first sort of 30 seconds to a minute,” he said of the ice-bath experience. “But when you get past that, you kind of feel this sense of Zen, and this calm, and then when you get out, you feel this burst of energy and positivity.”

2 Cold-plunge devotees say the practice offers all kinds of benefits, including mental clarity, pain management and even weight loss, citing proponents like the Dutch motivational speaker Wim Hof and the Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. There are few scientific studies on the practice, but Tracy Zaslow, a 48-year-old sports medicine doctor at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, said there is data that suggests cold exposure can at least help with muscle soreness. The science on whether regular cold plunges can help with anxiety and weight loss is less clear.

3 Regardless of the benefits, the practice has become popular enough that manufacturers are now swooping in to make it easier for celebrities and other wellness seekers to get their perfectly freezing ice baths on demand. Mr. Pasternak discovered this when he went searching for an alternative to his chest freezer, which turned out not to be the ideal vessel for the practice. The water inside did not circulate, which meant that after a minute or two, Mr. Pasternak’s body heat would warm it up, rendering the exercise somewhat less effective. Keeping it clean was also a pain. “I remember buying a fish tank filter thing,” he said.

4 Luckily, Mr. Pasternak found that he could buy a tub created specifically for the purpose of cold plunging. About a year ago, he purchased a Plunge, a $4,990 plug-in tub that filters, circulates and sanitizes water in addition to cooling it down to 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Mr. Pasternak keeps it in the outdoor space at his workout studio and has since introduced it to his celebrity clients. The race to create and market the perfect at-home cold plunge is now on. Thomas Schiffer, the founder of Blue Cube, a company that sells cold plunges to individuals and commercial spas, called the competition in this burgeoning industry the “cold wars.” Blue Cube’s offerings include a $15,999 Mini-Me cold plunge designed for home use and a $26,999 Malibu 56 model that can handle multiple plungers per day in a spa environment.

5 Is spending several thousand dollars on a cold plunge necessary to get the – real or imagined – benefits of cold therapy? Lauren Schramm, a trainer and breath work and ice bath coach, said she uses regular old Rubbermaid tubs, water and bags of ice when she leads ice bath classes in Brooklyn. “Cold water is cold water,” Ms. Schramm said. “You can turn your shower to cold when you’re in it, and you will get the same effect.” She added, however, that “if you have the funds, and you’re committed to the practice,” buying a cold plunge is more “sustainable,” because the water can be reused again and again. “If this is an investment that you would like to make, and it makes your experience of being in the tub better, awesome,” she said. Ms. Schramm and Dr. Zaslow cautioned that cold-plunge newbies should speak to their primary care doctors before dipping into an ice bath for the first time. The biggest risk of cold exposure is hypothermia, Dr. Zaslow said, and there are also rare cases in which cold exposure can trigger cardiac arrest or arrhythmias, especially in people with underlying health conditions.

6 For some wellness influencers, cold plunging has become a way of life. Lauryn Bosstick, the entrepreneur behind The Skinny Confidential, has written about the power of ice on her blog for years, and she now sells $69 “Hot Mess” ice rollers for the face. She also has two cold plunges at her home in Austin, Texas: a Blue Cube in her backyard and a Plunge in her bathroom. She said she reached out to both companies and now shares affiliate links for both models with her followers. “What I’ve realized about the cold plunge, specifically, is that it’s the hardest thing, hopefully, that I’m going to do all day. To start your day with that, knowing that you’re doing the most mentally tough thing in the morning, it makes everything else easier.”

7 Though Ms. Bosstick has a financial interest in getting her followers to adopt this practice, she allowed that most people can get the benefits of cold therapy for (almost) free. “I think people will say, ‘Oh, well not everyone can afford an ice bath,’” she said. “OK, well then get some ice – I’ve done this before – for $5 and put it in a bathtub with freezing cold water. That will do the trick.”

nytimes.com, 2022

‘What I’ve realized about the cold plunge, specifically, is that it’s the hardest thing, hopefully, that I’m going to do all day.’ (alinea 6)

After a passer-by handed over a half-used pack of cigarettes to a homeless man on a Melbourne street, the man asked me to buy him more cigarettes. ___ (36-1), he explained, he would be able to spend the small sums he received on food. My offer to buy him sandwiches instead was vehemently refused. The homeless man accused me of being miserly. He said that I was clearly not as generous as my benevolent predecessor. I subsequently refused his request for money in the belief that it would be wasted on cigarettes.

I believe my predecessor set a thoughtless precedent by giving a homeless smoker a health-harming product that the gifter was happy to be rid of. What are your thoughts on the matter? Joseph, Brisbane, Australia

Answer by ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah:

First, you weren’t obliged to give this man anything, and the terms of a gift respectfully given are up to the donor. Second, the argument he made was reversible. If giving him cigarettes freed up money for food, giving him food would have freed up money for cigarettes. What’s more, his need for cigarettes wasn’t as great as his need for food, and providing people something they need is a greater service than giving them something they don’t. His reproach was unmerited.

___ (36-2), a one-time intervention in the life of a stranger isn’t going to change anything. A small reduction in the number of cigarettes someone smokes in a lifetime has no discernible effect on the likelihood of getting a smoking-related disease, so giving this man a few cigarettes won’t make him worse off. Giving away useful things you don’t want or need is still an act of commendable charity. ___ (36-3), your reproach towards your predecessor is also unmerited.

New York Times, 2017

As a relatively small charity that helps people to live better with sight loss,
like many others we have seen donations drop over the last two years.
We want to do more. We would like to be able to concentrate on doing the
work we know makes a difference rather than scrabbling around for
5 scraps of funding here and there until we get enough to make it through.

What’s galling is the amount of money that’s actually out there, money
that those who have it don’t use or don’t really need (Britain’s top earners
giving less to charity while incomes rise, 15 December). I can promise you
that I will find a better use for it – one that will improve more people’s lives
10 and save the public purse from picking up the tab for the consequences
were we not here.

The Sackler family’s name may be mud at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art (New York’s Met museum to remove Sackler family name from its
galleries, 9 December), as it was at our London art galleries a couple of
15 years ago, but we could use their money too: I think I could hold my nose
just about long enough to take some of that apparently stinking pile and
do something better with it.

Are there any other disgraced billionaires out there who want to salve
their conscience a bit? Come and talk to me. I can help.
Hugh Sorrill
General manager, Coventry Resource Centre for the Blind

theguardian.com, 2021

Lees eerst de opgaven voordat je naar de tekst gaat.

Parks and green spaces

By Wendy Masterton (Doctoral Researcher, Social and Natural Sciences, University of Stirling), Hannah Carver (Lecturer in Substance Use, University of Stirling) and Tessa Parkes (Research Director, University of Stirling)

How does walking through a forest make you feel? Peaceful? Reflective? For many people, lockdown brought a new appreciation of nature and what it means for our well-being. The health benefits of immersing ourselves in “greenspace” are now widely accepted. Living in areas with grass and trees has been linked to lower risk of various health conditions such as high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. As well as physical health, greenspace is associated with positive mental health.

Our mission

A recent study found that people who spent at least two hours in nature per week were consistently more likely to report higher levels of health and well-being compared to people who spent less time in nature.

Our work seeks to understand exactly how greenspace programmes can improve mental health. A greenspace programme, or nature-based intervention, is a health project typically run outside in parks, woodland, forests and other greenspace areas.

These programmes can be designed for anyone, but have been shown to be particularly beneficial for those with poorer mental health. Projects can range from structured therapy programmes such as adventure, wilderness and horticultural therapies, to less formal activities such as community gardening, guided walks and the Japanese notion of “forest bathing” or shinrin-yoku.

We are currently working on developing a framework for those wishing to start up such initiatives. This is an important area of research, because while there is an increasing number of greenspace programmes for mental health, there is still limited understanding of the key components that make these projects successful. This makes it difficult to develop and implement new programmes and evaluate them successfully.

Mental health and nature

In our recent review we showed that greenspace programmes are successful in improving mental health due to seven interacting factors. Using these components we created a new framework for greenspace programmes for mental health that showed exactly how positive outcomes can be best achieved.

We believe this framework could provide a working model for future programme development. However, our findings also show that greenspace programmes do not work for everybody equally and seem to be more successful in improving mental health for some people than others.

Greenspace and inequality

There have been many petitions to keep parks and gardens open for public use, with green spaces described as crucial for our well-being.

But the availability of greenspace differs depending on where you live. Affluence allows people to buy homes in areas that have more green spaces and access to nature, less air pollution and more space for physical activity. If someone has less access to local parks, gardens and playing fields, they are far less likely to gain the benefits that those spaces can provide.

Some evidence shows that those living in the most deprived areas will actually benefit more from local green spaces, compared to those in more affluent areas – and that greenspace can help reduce the health inequality between high and low income groups. This could be due to poorer communities spending more time in their local areas, and affluence allowing people to travel further from their homes more regularly.

High-quality green spaces and access to nature should be available and easily accessible for everyone, but it is clear that this is currently not the case. With further funding cuts to the quantity and quality of these spaces, it is likely that the poorest communities will suffer the most.

What should be done?

Funding for public services is now going to be stretched even further. But it is more important than ever that continued government funding for parks and green spaces is kept as a high priority.

This funding must not be limited to popular beauty spots or tourist areas, but be prioritised to areas where people who are commonly overlooked may benefit the most. Not only are parks and green spaces crucial for our mental health and important for reducing inequalities, but quality spaces and green development are essential in the ongoing fight against climate change – it’s good for people and it’s good for the planet.

theconversation.com, 2020

‘As well as physical health, greenspace is associated with positive mental health.’ (eerste alinea)