Healthy Ecosystem Services and Healthy Human Settlements: Opportunities and Challenges in Northern Thailand

Healthy ecosystems are important for human health. There is a need for designers, planners, and researchers to collaborate in order to create the resilient built environments for both environmental and human well-being. However, the current research findings may be difficult to apply to specific context in actual settlements. In each settlement, urban or rural, designers, planners, and researchers need to understand the existing in contexts and issues to provide adequate research and design questions, which will lead to providing the solutions. These gaps between knowledge and implementation may result in the delay of progress. This study examined three built environment issues found in Northern Thailand via the perspectives of an urban planner, landscape architects, and researchers including environmental justice, food security, and clean air. The directions that such collaboration can move forward, involving evidence-based design, research methods, and design evaluation were then discussed. A new paradigm was proposed to improve the relationships between healthy ecosystem and healthy human settlements.