1. Introduction
In a world that is set within a paradigm of unlimited growth based on a fossil fuel economy while limited by biophysical planetary boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009), negative impacts on the environment are inevitable. Worsening environmental conditions also have a direct impact on human health and well-being. Air pollution is considered to be the single largest environmental risk to human health, causing around 400,000 premature deaths per year in Europe (EEA 2020). That is followed by noise disturbance, which can lead to severe impacts on mental and physical health and is attributed to more than 12,000 premature deaths annually in the EU (EEA 2020). Since the turn of the millennium, extreme weather events like climate change related heatwaves have also gained increasing attention and pose a significant risk to human health. During the 2003 heatwave in Europe, the excess mortality due to heat stress surpassed 70,000 cases (Laurent 2011) and under current global warming scenarios, the European Environment Agency expects an additional 130,000 deaths per year in Europe (EEA 2020).
