Nature Moves Us: Green Cities, Active Living: upcoming EUKN Policy Lab for Slovenia

Climate change, air pollution, and biodiversity loss are no longer solely environmental concerns: they have become pressing public health challenges. The Planetary Health perspective highlights the deep interconnection between human health & wellbeing and the ecosystems that sustain life. As urbanisation accelerates and ecological stressors intensify, cities play a crucial role in shaping both ecosystemic and human health. Equitable access to nature and the integration of green-blue infrastructure into city planning are essential to improving quality of life, reducing health inequalities, and fostering both individual and community resilience.

Low levels of health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) combined with increasing sedentary behaviour have come to represent a growing public health concern in cities. How can restoring urban nature help reverse this trend? How can nature-based solutions (NBS) help encourage active lifestyles and active travel, such as walking and cycling? These are some of the questions we will address in the Policy Lab ‘Nature moves us: Green cities active living’, diving into know-hows, strategies, practices for strengthening the urban nature-health nexus.

Organised by the EUKN in collaboration with the Slovenian Ministry of Natural Resources and Spatial Planning  Slovenian (MNVP), this Policy Lab will explore how embedding NBS into city strategies can support the health-environment nexus and contribute to more liveable cities and healthier, more active urban lifestyles, in line with HEPA Europe’s 24-hour movement paradigm.