Archive for: Conservation

Connecting Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene with Fresh Water Conservation and Climate Resilience: The Need to Facilitate Integration in Development Assistance

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Many areas that lack safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) also need to restore or protect fresh water ecosystems and enhance resilience to climate change. Integrated solutions can help end extreme poverty and ensure long-term access to basic human needs such as food, clean water, and sanitation facilities. Currently, the development sector all too often addresses WASH, climate resilience, and fresh water conservation as separate issues. Fortunately, though, awareness about the importance of integrated efforts to solve these challenges in development projects is increasing. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has publicly spoken about and financially supported some efforts to promote integrated solutions for addressing WASH, conservation, and climate. However, more can and should be done to fully facilitate integrated approaches.This Natural Resources Defense Council issue brief is focused on examples from U.S. government development aid funding, however, its recommendations are relevant for any funder or implementer, including development agencies, foundations, or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Year: 2014

Source: Natural Resources Defense Council

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Advocacy

Climate Change

Conservation

Integration

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Community Health, Family Planning, and Water Programs in Biodiversity Rich Areas of Madagascar

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From April 2011 to July 2012, Conservation International (CI) Madagascar implemented a Population, Health and Environment (PHE) project called Tokantrano Salama in the Ambositra-Vondrozo Forest Corridor (COFAV) in southeastern Madagascar. With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, CI Madagascar and partners Voahary Salama and Ny Tanintsika increased access to family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) services, improved access to clean water sources and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services, and promoted the benefits of integrated PHE approaches both within Madagascar and to the global PHE community. Using this integrated approach, CI and partners helped communities to improve their health at the same time they improved their water sources and the environment in this fragile and unique ecosystem.

Year: 2012

Source: Conservation International

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Conservation

Family Planning

Integration

Population

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Bushmeat Hunting and Extinction Risk to the World’s Mammals

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Terrestrial mammals are experiencing a massive collapse in their population sizes and geographical ranges around the world, but many of the drivers, patterns and consequences of this decline remain poorly understood. Here we provide an analysis showing that bushmeat hunting for mostly food and medicinal products is driving a global crisis whereby 301 terrestrial mammal species are threatened with extinction. Nearly all of these threatened species occur in developing countries where major coexisting threats include deforestation, agricultural expansion, human encroachment and competition with livestock. The unrelenting decline of mammals suggests many vital ecological and socio-economic services that these species provide will be lost, potentially changing ecosystems irrevocably. We discuss options and current obstacles to achieving effective conservation, alongside consequences of failure to stem such anthropogenic mammalian extirpation. We propose a multi-pronged conservation strategy to help save threatened mammals from immediate extinction and avoid a collapse of food security for hundreds of millions of people.

Year: 2016

Source: Royal Society Open Science

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Conservation

Wildlife

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Building Socio-ecological Resilience to Climate Change through Community-Based Coastal Conservation and Development: Experiences in Southern Madagascar

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Climate change impacts fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest, most marginalised communities, particularly those highly dependent on direct use of natural resources, such as subsistence fishing communities. Vulnerability to climate change involves social and ecological factors, and efforts to reduce it and build long-term resilience must target both. In Madagascar, generalised strategies developed at the national level address vulnerability, adding to a variety of international initiatives. Yet, such high-level planning inevitably remains vague and indeterminate for most of the island’s coastal communities, with little meaningful implementation on the ground. Therefore, local measures to build resilience and adaptive capacity are critical to ensure that resource-dependent communities are able to cope with the immediate and long-term effects of climate change. Examination of an integrated population-health-environment (PHE) programme in Madagascar, comprising a locally-managed marine area (LMMA) and socio-economic development activities, illustrates how practical initiatives can contribute to building immediate and long-lasting resilience and adaptive capacity. Such community-based approaches should play a key role in adaptation measures within the western Indian Ocean region, where many coastal communities live in severe poverty on the front line of a rapidly changing climate.

Year: 2012

Source: Western Indian Ocean Journal of Marine Science

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Adaptation

Climate Change

Community Outreach

Conservation

Resilience

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Bringing IPOPCORM to Scale in Coastal Philippines

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PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc.’s, Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management Project (IPOPCORM) has been scaled-up in the coastal Philippines. In the Siquijor Province, as IPOPCORM expanded to cover all 6 municipalities, the local Governments decided to incorporate population and reproductive health into coastal resource management legislation. IPOPCORM also experienced success scaling-up in the Danajon Bank Ecosystem, a biodiversity hotspot that experienced a loss of fisheries resources due to a dense population, leading to greater food insecurity. In this case study, IPOPCORM discusses their accomplishments in both regions and how it was achieved.

Year: 2006

Source: PATH Foundation Philippines Inc.

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Coastal

Conservation

Food Security

Scale-up

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Biodiversity Areas under Threat: Overlap of Climate Change and Population Pressures on the World’s Biodiversity Priorities

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Humans and the ecosystem services they depend on are threatened by climate change. Places with high or growing human population as well as increasing climate variability, have a reduced ability to provide ecosystem services just as the need for these services is most critical. A spiral of vulnerability and ecosystem degradation often ensues in such places. We apply different global conservation schemes as proxies to examine the spatial relation between wet season precipitation, population change over three decades, and natural resource conservation. Identifying areas of climate and population risk and their overlap with conservation priorities can help to target activities and resources that promote biodiversity and ecosystem services while improving human well-being.

Year: 2017

Source: PLOS One

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Climate Change

Conservation

Population

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Baseline Survey (2011) for Population, Health and Environment Scale-up Project in the Philippines

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This document summarizes the results of a baseline survey conducted in 40 randomly-selected villages in Bohol and the Verde Island Passage in central Philippines in 2011. The study was sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded “Building Actors and Leaders for Advancing Community Excellence in Development” (BALANCED) Project to inform future activities in the Philippines. The survey covers basic reproductive health, disease management, and livelihood and marine protection behaviors among men and women in vulnerable communities on the island of Bohol. The report then compares these Bohol behaviors to those of men and women in “new” sites in the Verde Island Passage. According to the survey analysis, households in coastal villages depend on the productivity of the marine environment for their livelihoods. The report also recommends increasing the amount and quality of public participation in project activities in order to maximize health and conservation outcomes.

Year: 2012

Source: The BALANCED Project

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Coastal

Community Outreach

Conservation

Integration

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Assessing a Model of Sustainable and Comprehensive PHE in the Lake Victoria Basin of Western Kenya

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The USAID-funded Advancing Partners & Communities Project received funding for population, health, and environment (PHE) approaches in East Africa. The Nyanza Reproductive Health Society (NRHS) received an 18-month grant to pilot community PHE approaches in fragile ecosystems with at-risk populations in the Lake Victoria Basin region of Western Kenya. The NRHS team was tasked with creating a sustainable PHE model that integrates all PHE components—population (community-based family planning); health (linkages with the Kenyan health system); environment (conservation of fragile ecosystems, reforestation, beach management, etc.); and significant livelihoods components. This document details challenges, lessons learned and other takeaways regarding the sustainability of the activities.

Year: 2016

Source: Advancing Partners & Communities Project

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Conservation

Family Planning

Integration

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Analyzing Changes in Population, Health and Environment Perceptions and Behaviors in the Saandani National Park, Tanzania

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This report shows the results of a Behavior Monitoring Survey conducted in 2012 in the communities around Saadani National Park (SANAPA) in Tanzania and a comparison with the results with those of a similar survey done three years earlier. In 2009, the BALANCED Project started working in the SANAPA area through an ongoing integrated coastal management initiative to develop and deliver integrated PHE messages through peer educators and community-based distributers of family planning commodities. In 2012, the BALANCED team conducted a follow-up survey to assess the changes in behaviors and attitudes resulting from the four years of BALANCED Project interventions. A comparison of results from the 2009 and 2012 surveys shows that the population, socioeconomic, health, and environmental conditions of those living around SANAPA have remained relatively stable between 2009 and 2012. It points as well to increased awareness of family planning and reproductive health FP/RH in the target areas, increased support amongst men for FP/RH, and increased support (by both males and females) for conservation activities.

Year: 2013

Source: The BALANCED Project

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Coastal

Community Outreach

Conservation

Family Planning

Integration

Monitoring & Evaluation

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

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An update—People in the Balance: Population and Natural Resources

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Highlights from the updated People in the Balance database (no longer online) illustrate how population growth exerts pressure on available natural resources, especially in countries experiencing rapid growth. The database provides information about the availability of three critical resources—freshwater, cropland and forests. It also includes data for population growth, which has important implications for resource availability.

Year: 2011

Source: PAI

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Conservation

Population

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