Are Scotland’s blue spaces its greatest untapped resource?
Getting more people out to our coasts, rivers and lochs could be a low-cost way of improving health outcomes, writes Roger Cox
Sometimes, when press releases containing statistics drawn from “studies” land in my inbox, I like to play a game of spot the not-so-hidden agenda. My personal highlights over the years include a release from an online movie streaming service claiming that “One in five Brits dislike watching films with strangers” (could the decidedly anti-cinema framing of the question perhaps have had some bearing on the result?); one from a luxury bath salts brand claiming that the number of people taking regular baths had more than doubled during the pandemic (er, perhaps because there wasn’t much else to do when we were all locked up indoors for weeks on end?); and a memoir-writing service claiming that 56 per cent of Brits feel most of their family history has been lost because “the person who knows most about it is either no longer around or cannot remember” (to which the subtext is clearly: “quick, get granny to write it all down before she either loses her marbles or pops her clogs – and, of course, we can help you out with that for a small fee.”)
I’m particularly suspicious of any research that attempts to put a precise cash value on something, particularly in cases where calculating said value would seem to be, well... impossible. Studies telling you that Thing X is worth Amount Y to the Scottish or UK economy are released so frequently these days that I’m not sure if anything could surprise me any more. What’s that you say? The colour purple was worth £17.7 million to Scotland last year? Right-o. And the decline of conkers-playing among young people has cost the Scottish string industry £8.3million so far this decade? Well, you don’t see kids playing conkers as much these days, right enough, so I guess that number must be accurate – thanks for the heads-up, Scottish Conkers Federation.
Having said that, not all studies are created equal, and some are more worthy of our attention than others. For example, the recently published report titled The Worth of Water, carried out by the University of Aberdeen, Public Health Scotland and the charity Greenspace Scotland, seems like something to take seriously, given the folks involved, rather than something to forward to work colleagues with a laughing face emoji.
The study’s headline finding is that, within the Forth region alone (so the City of Edinburgh, Clackmannanshire, East Lothian, Falkirk, Fife, Midlothian, Stirling and West Lothian, total adult population about 1.32 million) rivers, lochs and coastlines deliver health benefits worth £105.2 million a year from “exposure to nature” (eg. eating a picnic at the beach), £123.3 million a year from physical activity carried out “around” them (eg. jogging beside a river), and £39.6m a year from aquatic activities happening on or in them (eg. swimming in a loch).
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How were these numbers arrived at? Well, with some difficulty, but let’s get into it because sometimes – as in this case – the details of how the big headline numbers were calculated can tell us more than the big headline numbers themselves.
For each of the three study areas, the total number of hours spent in blue spaces across the whole region was extrapolated from answers given by 2,449 respondents to a questionnaire. Then, the health gains these totals represented were quantified using so-called Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). A QALY is a measure of health that combines the length and quality of life, so one QALY equals one year in perfect health. Finally, the QALY totals were monetised using a “marginal cost per QALY” calculation, which reflects what it would cost the NHS to produce the equivalent health gain through clinical means.Based on this, the study found that, in a 12-month period, exposure to nature in blue spaces would have generated health benefits for an estimated 295,357 adults across the Forth region (22.4 per cent of the population), equivalent to 5,892 Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) with an annual value of £105.2 million.
Physical activity in blue spaces? Health benefits for 200,911 adults (15.3 per cent of the population), equivalent to 6,912 QALYs valued at £123.3 million. Aquatic activities? Health benefits for 192,325 adults (14.6 per cent of the population), generating 2,219 QALYs valued at £39.6 million.
Do I think the amounts of money quoted in the study are precisely accurate? No, absolutely not. Given all the variables involved, chances are they’re all several million pounds out, plus or minus. But do I think that, broadly speaking, this study suggests there are significant health gains to be had from exercising in and around blue spaces, or even just spending time in them? It certainly seems that way. Even if you reduce all the numbers arrived at in the study by 50 per cent, you’d still have to concede that all those additional years of healthy life would be well worth having.
More significant than the headline numbers, though, are the percentages of the population currently spending time in and around our lochs, rivers and seas. If less than 25 per cent of people are accessing blue spaces at all, and only around 15 per cent are exercising in or around them, then surely what we’re looking at here is an enormous untapped resource. How hard would it be to get those numbers up to 50 per cent and 30 per cent? After all, it’s not like Scotland’s short of water – there’s plenty of blue space to go around.
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