Archive for: Biodiversity


This booklet summarizes the journey of Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) in the Philippines. Synthesizing decades of leadership and learnings from PHE programs led by local and regional experts, it highlights key projects and milestones and summarizes lessons learned and key themes that have emerged during the last two decades. This resource is intended to serve as a practical guide for others interested in PHE implementation, including program managers, technical advisors, or policymakers in the Philippines and around the world.

Year: 2021

Source: Knowledge SUCCESS and PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc.

Access the resource

This report focuses on how population impacts many aspects of our lives, including issues as diverse as poverty, health, education, water, and forests. Population matters even more today because historically high numbers of people are intensifying these impacts on our well-being at a time when the demographic picture of the world is becoming increasingly complex. The report includes a glossary of population terms and explains how and why population matters to a variety of issues, including Maternal Health, Infectious Diseases and HIV/AIDS, Education and Labor, Poverty Reduction, Migration and Urbanization, Security, Food Security, Climate Change, Water Resources, Forests, and Biodiversity.

Year: 2011

Source: PAI

Access the resource

    The Tuungane Project is a collaboration between The Nature Conservancy, Frankfurt Zoological Society, and Pathfinder International that seeks to address the most significant health and environmental issues within the Greater Mahale Ecosystem in Western Tanzania. The Tuungane Project’s current and planned freshwater resource conservation interventions include, but are not limited to, support for development of fisheries co-management institutions (Beach Management Units, or BMUs), protection of fish breeding sites and the existing Mahale freshwater protected area, micro-credit loans to BMU members, reduction of sedimentation through agricultural land use management interventions, education, and capacity-building. This ecological survey focused on the freshwater component of the Lake Tanganyika Ecosystem. The diverse and fascinating animal life of Lake Tanganyika is a rich biological treasure of global significance.

    Year: 2013

    Source: Tuungane Project

    Access the resource

      A hugely diverse alliance of over 150 organisations working in 170 countries support the Thriving Together statement. Whether their work has a focus on conserving endangered species, providing family planning services, restoring habitats, promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights or a range of other human and environmental health issues, they all agree with the Thriving Together statement. At the heart of the statement is the widespread agreement, for the first time, that removal of barriers to family planning is critically important not only for women and girls, but also for environmental conservation and biodiversity. The Trust’s paper “Removing Barriers to Family Planning, Empowering Sustainable Environmental Conservation: A Background Paper and Call for Action” summarises why removing barriers to family planning is critical for women’s and girls’ health and empowerment, and sustainable environmental conservation.

      Source: Margaret Pyke Trust

      Access the resource

        Research suggests that the scale of human population and the current pace of its growth contribute substantially to the loss of biological diversity. Although technological change and unequal consumption inextricably mingle with demographic impacts on the environment, the needs of all human beings—especially for food—imply that projected population growth will undermine protection of the natural world. Numerous solutions have been proposed to boost food production while protecting biodiversity, but alone these proposals are unlikely to staunch biodiversity loss. An important approach to sustaining biodiversity and human well-being is through actions that can slow and eventually reverse population growth: investing in universal access to reproductive health services and contraceptive technologies, advancing women’s education, and achieving gender equality.

        Year: 2017

        Source: Science

        Access the resource

          We identify three categories of challenges that have to be addressed to maintain and enhance human health in the face of increasingly harmful environmental trends. Firstly, conceptual and empathy failures (imagination challenges), such as an over-reliance on gross domestic product as a measure of human progress, the failure to account for future health and environmental harms over present day gains, and the disproportionate effect of those harms on the poor and those in developing nations. Secondly, knowledge failures (research and information challenges), such as failure to address social and environmental drivers of ill health, a historical scarcity of transdisciplinary research and funding, together with an unwillingness or inability to deal with uncertainty within decision making frameworks. Thirdly, implementation failures (governance challenges), such as how governments and institutions delay recognition and responses to threats, especially when faced with uncertainties, pooled common resources, and time lags between action and effect.

          Year: 2015

          Source: The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health

          Access the resource

            The Packard Foundation’s Population-Environment (PE) Initiative, which began in June 2000, placed primary emphasis on supporting projects that integrated conservation and family planning in communities near areas of high biodiversity. It supported leadership development and increased advocacy for and awareness of population-environment linkages. The PE strategy sought to improve the quality of life in focal areas, increase collaboration and leadership on interdisciplinary topics, and used mass media and targeted campaigns to increase the public and policymakers’ awareness of the links and solutions. The review team finalized a report to the Packard Foundation in June, 2005 that covers the three objectives of the Packard Foundation Population-Initiative. This report to USAID provides a more limited assessment of the success of the Packard and USAID-funded field projects with a particular focus on six USAID-funded projects in the Philippines and Madagascar, three of which are co-funded with Packard.
            This 2005 project review concentrates on three major questions:
            1. What are the likely long-term impacts of this Initiative on funding and the field of Population-Environment?
            2. What results have been achieved by projects implemented under the Initiative? and
            3. What lessons have been learned that may be of broader use to the Foundation, other donors, and the field as a result of implementing this Initiative?

            Year: 2005

            Source: United States Agency for International Development | The David and Lucille Packard Foundation

            Access the resource

              In an effort to prioritize conservation efforts, scientists developed the concept of biodiversity hotspots. Since most hotspots are located in countries where poverty is widespread, the success of conservation efforts depends in part upon a recognition that poverty can be a significant constraint on conservation, and at the same time conservation could be an important component of alleviating long-term poverty. This paper presents five key socioeconomic poverty indicators (access to water, undernourishment, potential population pressure, number living below poverty line and debt service) and integrates them with an ecologically based hotspots analysis in order to illustrate the magnitude of the overlap between biological conservation and poverty. The analysis here suggests that the overlap between severe, multifaceted poverty and key areas of global biodiversity is great and needs to be acknowledged. Understanding the magnitude of overlap and interactions among poverty, conservation and macroeconomic processes is crucial for identifying illusive, yet possible, win–win solutions.

              Year: 2007

              Source: Ecological Economics

              Access the resource

                This briefing paper makes the links between population dynamics (including population growth, density and migration) with biodiversity loss and demands for food, energy, land and other natural resources. The combination of increasing population growth and consumption levels is changing the planet’s ecosystems at an unprecedented rate and scale, resulting in rates of biodiversity loss that pose a major threat to human well-being.

                Integrated Population Health Environment (PHE) approaches combining conservation with reproductive health services can increase the effectiveness of biodiversity protection interventions and benefit both the health of local communities and the ecosystems upon which they depend.

                As human rights-based programmes can positively influence population dynamics by empowering women and advancing reproductive health, the conservation sector should take a stronger advocacy role in acknowledging and addressing population dynamics as a key driver of biodiversity loss, by working across sectors to embrace integrated strategies that benefit both people and the environment.

                Year: 2012

                Source: Population & Sustainability Network

                Access the resource

                  These stories and photos are from policy makers and champions of an integrated approach to development known as Population, Health, and Environment (PHE), which focuses on the interconnectedness between human health and environmental health. PHE programs improve primary health care services such as family planning and reproductive health, while also helping communities conserve biodiversity, manage natural resources, and develop sustainable livelihoods. When these issues are addressed  simultaneously, communities thrive. This collection highlights the experiences of PHE stakeholders and champions in the Lake Victoria Basin.

                  The stories are an inspiration to anyone struggling to understand why PHE is important. Any donor or development partner who is looking for reasons to invest in PHE can find answers right here. For program designers and developers of integrated PHE  approaches, this collection provides an overview of key components to consider while designing your package.

                  Year: 2018

                  Source: Lake Victoria Basin Commission and the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project

                  Access the resource