Background
The built and natural environment and health are inextricably linked. However, there is considerable debate surrounding the strength and quality of the evidence base underpinning principles of good practice for built and natural environment design in promoting health. This umbrella review aimed to assess relationships between the built and natural environment and health, concentrating on five topic areas: neighbourhood design, housing, food environment, natural and sustainable environment, and transport.

To date, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mitigation strategies and the accompanying health co-benefits in different economic sectors have not been fully investigated. The purpose of this paper is to review comprehensively the evidence on GHG mitigation measures and the related health co-benefits, identify knowledge gaps, and provide recommendations to promote further development and implementation of climate change response policies.

Over half of the population of the world live in
urban areas. This means that efforts to meet human
development goals and sustain economic growth
must be concentrated in cities. However, the pursuit
of more prosperous, inclusive and sustainable urban
development is complicated by climate change, which
multiplies existing environmental risks, undermines the
effectiveness of existing infrastructure, and creates new
resource constraints.
In this paper, we conclusively demonstrate that there

The building sector is considered as the biggest single contributor to world energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a good understanding of the nature and structure of energy use in buildings is crucial for establishing the adequate future energy and climate change policies. Availability of the updated data is becoming increasingly important in order to allow a rigorous analysis. In this paper, recent data on the world energy consumption in both residential and commercial buildings are reported.

People spend most of their time inside buildings, and buildings are responsible for approximately one third of total direct and indirect energy-related worldwide carbon emissions. Likewise, buildings in the U.S. account for about 40% of total U.S. energy consumption. Future building development will be driven not only by emerging challenges such as vulnerability to a changing climate and resource scarcity, but also by disruptive innovations and societal changes.

The built environment accounts for approximately forty percent of the total energy consumption in developed countries. Because buildings have a long life, the greatest opportunity for energy reduction in the built environment will come from energy conservation in the existing building stock. An overview of the policy challenges presented by the built environment, with an emphasis on existing facilities, is accompanied by a discussion of specific technologies that may have the potential to reduce energy use.