Pulitzer Prize-winner Mary Oliver is best known for her awe-filled, often hopeful, reflections on and observations of nature.
Greetings like-minded nature advocates,
Yes! Let’s tell about it!
This month, thanks to our supporters, we’ve made more research papers available on GPGB.org. We’re making it easier for you to share this information with your colleagues and clients and perhaps astonish them. Papers like Human Response to Window Views and Indoor Plants in the Workplace and Daylighting-Bias and Biophilia; Quantifying the Impact of Daylighting on Occupants’ Health, and Creating Business Environments that Support Sustainable Human Resources might just help provide the evidence needed for the building or company owner to make an investment in biophilic design. You’ll find them on this page.
And we’re celebrating a “mission milestone” with you. GPGB.org had over 16,000 unique visits last month. That is up by 5000 from the previous month. Thank you!
Resources for You
Reviewing the early feedback from our biophilic design survey, it appears that the biggest hurdle most of you face is communicating the economic benefits. Frequently, design decisions are made based on budget, including maintenance budgets, or on a bank’s Pro-forma financing formula. But today, in a business environment where health, sustainability, and ethical impact are central to survival, ESG (environmental, social, and governance) metrics are being adopted to assess businesses’ non-financial performance. When combined with conventional metrics, investors and lenders get a more complete picture of the building’s value and potential for return.
Want to become informed about these developments before you huddle up with other design stakeholders on a new building project? International Well Building Institute (IWBI) has free, on-demand webcasts on this topic. Check out How health is powering better investment decisions, and Presenting Clients with the Business Case for WELL.
Fun with Nature
iNaturalist is a citizen science project and online social network of over 750,000 naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity across the globe. By recording and sharing your observations, you help create research quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. iNaturalist is a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.
A fun way to use iNaturalist is to participate in or organize a BioBlitz. A bioblitz is a communal citizen-science effort to record as many species as possible within a designated location and time period.
I imagine the fun I would have had doing this with my kids when they were young, but now is not too late!
Thanks to GPGB Supporters, the mission to communicate nature’s benefits is being accomplished. And thanks to everyone who is helping to “tell” the astonishing news about the AWE*some benefits of access to nature.
If you are not already a Supporter, and if, after first taking care of yourself and your dependents, the spirit moves you, please consider joining GPGB’s mission to increase everyone’s access to nature in the built environment.
#StayPlanted and Be well,
Mary Golden
Advocacy Incubator