Archive for: Conservation


MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience is implementing an integrated, multisectoral population, health, and environment (PHE) approach to address complex, interconnected challenges in Tanzania while strengthening health resilience. Three specific approaches in this PHE model include: Model Household/Boma Initiative, First-Time Parents program, and Community Conservation Microfinance Groups. Learn more about these approaches in the report.

Year: 2023

Source: MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience

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The vision of the Margaret Pyke Trust is a future without barriers to family planning, in a climate resilient world with healthy ecosystems. As a global non-governmental organization embedded in the human health, biodiversity and climate sectors, one of their activities is working in partnership with other environmental conservation and health organizations to develop projects which simultaneously improve sexual and reproductive health services, provide alternative and sustainable livelihoods, and support the conservation of biodiversity. This year, they set a challenge of starting the process of creating new partnerships between health NGOs and Conserve Global. Conserve Global’s mission is to expand Africa’s conservation footprint and nature-based economy by supporting the establishment of community-initiated conservancies in the buffer zones adjacent to national parks.

In this report, we set out why we think the Population Health and Environment (PHE) approach could be appropriate for Conserve Global’s mission and the communities it works with and for, and identify two potential new partners to deliver PHE across its focal landscapes.

Year: 2023

Source: Margaret Pyke Trust

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The aim of this guide is to outline the unmet need for family planning that exists in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, highlight the barriers to accessing and using family planning that exist for many girls and women, explain why conservation organizations are uniquely placed to introduce such activities to the communities they work with, and provide guidance for any organization that wishes to start a program to tackle this issue. It is based on CHASE Africa’s experience over the past ten years of supporting local partners to run, and in several cases set-up, community health and family planning programs in Kenya and Uganda. While some of the guidance is context specific, the guide highlights how programs could be adapted to other situations and circumstances.

Year: 2021

Source: CHASE Africa

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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

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    This report describes the accomplishments and lessons learned by the Environmental Health Project (CDM) as part of the design and implementation of a pilot project to address community health and conservation issues, as requested by USAID/Nepal. The project was devised to build the self-help capacity of CFUGs to implement and sustain integrated approaches to population, health and environment (PHE) that also contribute to sustainable livelihood development. The pilot engaged 114 CFUGs in a variety of PHE advocacy, awareness-raising and service delivery activities during 2006-2008. RIMS-Nepal, WWF-Nepal, and ADRA-Nepal collaborated with CDM on this initiative. The livelihood, health and conservation accomplishments detailed here provide insights and best practices for PHE practitioners.

    Year: 2009

    Source: United States Agency for International Development | CDM International

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      Madagascar has a rich history of integrated conservation and development initiatives. This report provides an overview of the evolution of the integrated PHE approach in Madagascar from the late 1980s through until the present day, along with a summary of opportunities and challenges relating to the scale up of this approach moving forward. It draws heavily on several excellent reports published during the mid-late 2000s, supplemented by grey literature and personal communications. This report is organised chronologically, with overlapping phases reflecting key developments in policy and practice. Major projects and players are highlighted at each stage, in addition to important approaches and lessons learned.

      Year: 2014

      Source: Blue Ventures | The Madagascar PHE Network

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        The purpose of this review is to describe the growing consensus regarding the contribution of natural processes – ‘nature’ – to human health. Globally, natural environments are becoming smaller and critically degraded because of various human-related factors. Consequently, some of the ‘free’ health benefits nature confers are being lost. This is especially problematic for people in rural areas with limited access to clinical services whose lives depend closely upon nature. The “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment” explored ecosystem changes and their subsequent effects on human well-being, including health. Global Burden of Disease studies have also revealed the importance of environmental factors to health. Not coincidentally, geographic areas in the two research efforts overlap, but convincing research describing how conserving healthy environments may positively affect human health remains lacking. Establishing ecosystem-human health causal linkages via traditional epidemiological approaches is challenging. Innovative research initiatives are increasing our understanding and appreciation of nature’s role as a provider of health, rendering conservation potentially a healthcare strategy. Transdisciplinary university teaching is also playing a role in broadening the awareness of these important linkages and developing research skills to meet the challenge.

        Year: 2013

        Source: Current Opinion in Obstetrics & Gynecology

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          This case study examines the link between marine resource management and the contraceptive use among married couples in the lobster-fishing village of Punta Allen, located in the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Several reasons appear to contribute to small desired and actual family sizes, including a medical clinic staff effective in promoting family planning, cooperative and private resource ownership, changing cultural attitudes, geographical limitations to population and economic growth, and a desire to conserve the environment for aesthetic and economic motives.

          Year: 2008

          Source: Population and Environment

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            Population-Health-Environment (PHE) is an interdisciplinary model of programme design which recognises the complex interconnections between people, their health and their environment. PHE responds holistically to the challenges faced by ecosystems and the communities dependent on them, with thematically distinct but interconnected work strands sharing the same infrastructure, resources and goals. This has been shown to achieve better outcomes than tackling health and environmental issues in isolation. This paper shows how PHE programme design has been used by Blue Ventures for providing family planning services in a remote, biodiverse coastal region in southwest Madagascar. The PHE programme has integrated family planning services into a pre-existing, community-based conservation programme, aided by the established infrastructure and good community relations developed by the conservation workers. Implementation of the programme has led to a strong uptake of family planning services, and couples in the region are now able to make their own family planning choices. Successes and challenges of the programme are discussed.

            Year: 2014

            Source: Reproductive Health Matters

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              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

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