Join Us in Urging Congress to Pass the Outdoors for All Act
Learn what you can do to close the nature gap
Published December 12, 2023
Treeline Review was founded to get more people outdoors and to help them need fewer things to do it. So when we discovered REI Co-op’s “Outside in 5” initiative, we were thrilled to hear about something so up our alley! In its simplest terms, this is an effort to put everyone in America within 5 minutes of public green space.
This article is part of our series on reducing barriers to outdoor access and was made possible by funding from REI.
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Friends of Anacostia Park is a community-led non-profit organization that is part of the Outside in 5 local projects. Photo by Liz Thomas.
What is Outside in 5?
REI's Outside in 5 initiative is community-led and multi-pronged, putting effort and a portion of REI Membership funds toward “supporting local projects and urging Congress to pass the Outdoors for All Act to create more green spaces and get everyone closer to fresh air, rustling trees and time outside.”
REI’s approach emphasizes not just the building and rehabilitating of green spaces, but also a number of goals around ensuring people feel safe, welcome, and entitled to those spaces. This sounds awesome, and since we’re also scientists, policy nerds, and global citizens, we wanted to learn more.
While supporting the Outdoors for All Act is only one aspect of REI’s initiative, it has the potential for wide-reaching impacts, so we wanted to dig deeper into the Act, the science behind it, and where the money’s coming from and where it’s going. So let’s get into it.
The TL;DR verdict: the Outdoors for All Act is solid. It basically cements an existing bi-partisan program that funds parks and open space work in under-served communities, guaranteeing the existence and funding of this program into the future (through a federal conservation fund, not tax dollars).
The bill is in the early stages, though, and currently has a low likelihood of getting passed, so it would be extremely helpful for you to message your Congresspeople to let them know you support it.
Email them directly, or use REI’s template (alternatively, Google “message Congress about the Outdoors for All Act” and go through your favorite nonprofit). Boom, done.
If you want the longer story, excellent! I would love to tell you.
One way organizations are closing the nature gap is increasing equitable access to the urban tree canopy by planting trees.
The Supporting Evidence
First: the science. You’re probably aware that there is a veritable mountain of scientific evidence that spending time in the outdoors is vitally important for human physical health, mental health, creativity, well-being, early education/child development, incarceration, and just all-around being alive (1,2,3,4,5,6).
And while obviously immersive experiences like camping and hiking are wonderful, it doesn’t even take hours or days outside to get the beneficial effects of nature: a few minutes and even seconds in natural, green spaces have been shown to have beneficial effects on mood and cognitive functioning (4).
A creative student-built garden in Harlem, New York City brings green space to a part of the country with limited access to parks. Photo by Liz Thomas.
The Barriers
So what’s the problem, right? Just walk outside! Unfortunately, for a staggering number of Americans, particularly in urban areas, walking outside doesn’t equal communing with nature.
Community members and leaders from the Friends of Anacostia Park at an event to increase awareness about park programming.
Inequitable Distribution of Nature
While accessing and even viewing green spaces may feel easy for some, in reality this access – and all the benefits of nature – are distributed unequally by race, income, and age (6).
Historically, communities with less political power–often largely POC, Indigenous, and/or low-income communities–have been displaced or re-zoned such that green space is scarce and industrial and other pollutants are high.
Added to this inequitable distribution of nature is the fact that many people feel unwelcome or unsafe in the outdoors because of their skin color, sexual orientation, body size, and/or mental or physical abilities.
Transportation Barriers
Lastly, even if an open space is “close” in absolute terms, barriers like transportation, cost, experience, health challenges and injuries, lack of sidewalks, and other factors can greatly impact someone’s ability to access and enjoy time outside(7,8).
[For those who like to nerd out: Access to nature (and the lack thereof) can be measured in a variety of ways – for example, measuring how much green space in a census block has been lost over time(9); percentage of city residents who live within a certain distance of a park(10); park acreage per urban neighborhood(10); park quality, including aspects like amenities, maintenance, and safety (11); and others.]
“One in three Americans has little to no ability to enjoy time outside, and that number skyrockets to three out of four – over 75%! – of Americans in predominantly low-income, non-white communities. ”
Lack of access to green spaces affects different numbers of people depending on the study you read and exactly what they’re measuring, but any way you slice it, the effects are massive, and felt disproportionately by vulnerable communities.
One in three Americans has little to no ability to enjoy time outside, and that number skyrockets to three out of four – over 75%! – of Americans in predominantly low-income, non-white communities(6). 100 million people, including 28 million children, do not have a park within a 10-minute walk of their home(10).
The Nature Gap
This discrepancy is what’s variously called the Nature Gap, Green Gap, Outdoor Equity Gap, and other terms.
This gap is a huge and systemic problem no matter what you name it, and it’s only getting worse as global climate change leads to massive increases in excessive heat, excessive cold, natural disasters, disease, and other impacts–all of which are known to affect vulnerable communities at much higher rates(12).
All these statistics can make a problem feel pretty distant, so let’s bring it to a more relatable place.
Think back to the first few months of the pandemic (an uncomfortable exercise, I know. The haircut my wife gave me was…traumatic). I think we can all agree that during lockdown, space–I don’t even mean outdoor space, I mean just any space where you felt comfortable and relaxed–went from an assumed fact of life to a LUXURY. An absolute privilege. In some countries, it was a privilege literally outlawed by police patrolling the streets, preventing people from leaving their homes.
But if you were someone with buckets of money–not to name names but one that starts with “K” and ends with “ardashian” comes to mind–you could charter a yacht and rent a private island for you and your closest friends and family, #makingitwork, #blessed.
But even if you were more moderately privileged you had a whole HOUSE with ROOMS [PLURAL] and a BACKYARD and maybe a BLOCK you could WALK AROUND and look at TREES like some kind of MONARCH. And if you had less privilege, you were stuck inside with a number of people – or potentially worse, alone – in a small space without clean air or green things and there wasn’t anywhere else to go.
That feeling of not being able to take a deep breath, which we all felt at some point no matter our level of privilege–that’s what we’re talking about here. It’s a feeling some people live with every day.
Outdoors for All Act
A green playground designed by students in Queens, New York, gives outdoor access in a part of the country with limited parks. Photo by Liz Thomas.
Unsurprisingly given this sudden shift in our collective understanding of space, the wake of the pandemic saw a good amount of new legislation related to green space passed at the federal, state, and local levels. Which brings us to the Outdoors for All Act.
This was initially proposed to Congress back in 2021, but after being discussed by a committee, it never went anywhere, so it was re-introduced in February of 2023 and is currently on the table to be discussed again(13).
The Act takes an existing program–the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program (ORLP)t–and, with a few updates, makes it into law.
The Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program
The ORLP has been around since 2014 and was established to provide grants to urban areas to help fund outdoors projects, with priority given to projects located in economically disadvantaged areas and those with few outdoor recreation opportunities(14).
Administered by the National Park Service, this program has bipartisan support and a great track record, funding nearly 100 projects with over $100 million as of 2022(14, 15, 16). This money comes not from tax dollars but from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which takes a percentage of the earnings from federal offshore oil and gas leasing and invests it back into “strengthen[ing] communities, preserv[ing] our history and protect[ing] our national endowment of lands and waters”(17).
You will likely not be shocked to know that over the 55 years since the LWCF was established, over $22 billion has managed to be, uh, “diverted from the fund”(18). Luckily in 2020, the federal government passed the Great American Outdoors Act, which, among other things, was like, “Haha no but really, this money needs to go where it’s supposed to and that’s conservation.” This act locked in $900 million to fund LWCF initiatives, including the ORLP(18). So far, so good!
ORLP is a Discretionary Fund
The issue with the ORLP is that currently it’s a “discretionary fund,” which basically means the number of projects funded and the amount of funding can change from year to year, and the program is vulnerable to being abolished if the administration’s priorities change. The Outdoors for All Act would put legal structure and guarantees around the ORLP, as well as make a few updates to ensure that the communities most in need of help are able to get it.
Friends of Anacostia Park in Maryland restores the park’s natural and built environment for the local community. Photo by Liz Thomas.
The Act's Solution to the Funding Problem
You can think of this shift like a board game: right now, as a discretionary fund, the ORLP is like a game where the rules could change after every turn, and at any moment, someone could come in and say THIS GAME IS OVER. Hard to win, right?
Passing the Outdoors for All Act would write a rulebook for the game, ensuring that the players adhere to the same rules every time and that the game can continue into the future.
All in all, that sounds like a good plan to us, but as I mentioned, the first proposal of this law didn’t go anywhere, so presumably there are some serious headwinds it will have to get through to be passed by Congress.
Despite a background in public policy, I still don’t totally understand why things that seem like pretty unambiguously good things don’t manage to happen in politics, but I do know that people vocalizing their support for those good things goes a long way! As does the support of the over 50 nonprofits, businesses, and other entities like the Sierra Club, American Heart Association, American Hiking Society, REI Co-op, and others that currently endorse the Act (19).
You don’t have to go far to get access to trails and green space—for example, this park is in Queens, New York. Photo by Liz Thomas.
How to Voice Your Support for the Outdoors for All Act
Which brings us back to the beginning: message your Congresspeople! Let’s get that money to communities that need it and convert those rules into laws.
Email your representatives directly to express your support, use REI’s template, or Google “message Congress about the Outdoors for All Act” and use the template created by your favorite organization. You can keep track of the progress of the Act here, and we at Treeline Review will keep you updated as well!
Remember, and tell your friends – the Outdoors for All Act is not funded by taxpayer money, and will not raise your taxes!
Sources
Twohig-Bennett C, Jones A. The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes. Environ Res. 2018 Oct;166:628-637. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2018.06.030. Epub 2018 Jul 5.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 2018. Urban nature for human health and well-being: a research summary for communicating the health benefits of urban trees and green space. FS-1096. Washington, DC.
CDC. “Benefits of Physical Activity.” CDC.gov, CDC, 1 Nov. 2021, www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/pa-health/index.htm
Weir, Kirsten. “Nurtured by Nature.” American Psychological Association, vol. 51, no. 3, 1 Apr. 2020, www.apa.org/monitor/2020/04/nurtured-nature
Kuo, Ming, et al. “Do Experiences with Nature Promote Learning? Converging Evidence of a Cause-And-Effect Relationship.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, no. 305, 19 Feb. 2019, https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2019.00305
Moran, Dominique, et al. "Does Nature Contact in Prison Improve Well-Being?" Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 22 February 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/24694452.2020.1850232?journalCode=raag21
Rowland-Shea, Jenny, et al. “The Nature Gap.” Center for American Progress, 21 July 2020, www.americanprogress.org/article/the-nature-gap/
CDC. “Disability Impacts All of Us Infographic | CDC.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5 Jan. 2023, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html
Herrmann, Tracy & Bettmann, Joanna & Sweeney, Caroline & Marchand, William & Carlson, Jennifer & Hanley, Adam. (2022). Military veterans’ motivation and barriers to outdoor recreation participation. Leisure Studies. 1–18. 10.1080/02614367.2022.2125556. See also “Military Outdoors.” Sierra Club, 23 Apr. 2019, www.sierraclub.org/military-outdoors
Vincent A. Landau, Meredith L. McClure, and Brett G. Dickson, “Analysis of the Disparities in Nature Loss and Access to Nature. Technical Report.” (Truckee, CA: Conservation Science Partners, 2020), available at https://www.csp-inc.org/public/CSP-CAP_Disparities_in_Nature_Loss_FINAL_Report_060120.pdf.
Trust for Public Land. Parks and an Equitable Recovery. Trust for Public Land. May 27, 2021. Accessed December 4, 2023. https://www.tpl.org/parks-and-an-equitable-recovery-parkscore-report
Rigolon A. A complex landscape of inequity in access to urban parks: A literature review. Landsc Urban Plan. 2016;153:160-169. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.05.017
United States Environmental Protection Agency. Climate Change and the Health of Socially Vulnerable People. https://www.epa.gov/climateimpacts/climate-change-and-health-socially-vulnerable-people#:~:text=Climate%20change%20may%20lead%20to,measures%20to%20reduce%20their%20exposure. Accessed December 4, 2023
Govtrack.US. S. 448: Outdoors for All Act. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/s448. Accessed December 4, 2023.
Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition. OUTDOOR RECREATION LEGACY PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM. https://lwcfcoalition.org/orlp. Accessed December 4, 2023.
US Department of the Interior. https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-announces-61-million-increase-outdoor-access-urban-spaces
US National Park Service. National Park Service grants $16 million to bolster locally led conservation and recreation improvements in 13. 10 August 2021. stateshttps://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/national-park-service-grants-16-million-to-bolster-locally-led-conservation-and-recreation-improvements-in-13-states.htm
US National Park Service. Land and Water Conservation Fund. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/lwcf/index.htm. Last updated 15 December 2022.
Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition. Our Land, Our Water, Our Heritage. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a60299ff7c508c3c05f2e1/t/627d5fc4f260de484bacaddd/1652383684699/ORLP+Factsheet+5.12.22.pdf. Accessed December 4, 2023.
Padilla.senate.gov. The Outdoors for All Act. https://www.padilla.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Outdoors-For-All-Fact-Sheet.pdf. Accessed December 4, 2023.
