Archive for: Report


From the 1980s-1990s the Philippine Government, with help from the United Nations and the academic community, created poverty alleviation projects that linked Population, Health, and Environment (PHE). These PHE projects focused on improving natural resource management, reproductive health services, enhancing food security, and providing Filipinos with more livelihood options. These integrated projects proved to be successful, creating a desire to spread or “scale-up” the PHE approach. Scaling-up has three components: expansion, replication, and collaboration. This report notes several opportunities for scaling-up, such as reaching out to new locations and people, extending pilot projects to policies at local and national levels, and expanding services to current clients. Another key factor for scaling-up the PHE approach is strengthening the national PHE network. A recap of lessons that have been learned through scaling-up is also included.

Year: 2008

Source: World Wildlife Fund | Population Reference Bureau

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    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

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      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

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        This report was commissioned to address the question of what works and what doesn’t work to make PHE programs successful – the most successful being those with the potential for scale or expansion. Findings were derived from document reviews, web searches and interviews with members of the PHE practice community. The report aims to reveal how PHE has evolved to fill an important gap, i.e., a tested approach to working cross-sectorally that achieves results in multiple domains. Its evolution has been both directed and natural. Direction, and ballast, has come from core funders and a group within the community of practice. “Ground-truthing” has come from the vast array of other practitioners. Integration is not easy but with time, resources and skill, it can be successfully achieved under a variety of conditions. Key factors facilitating success are described within. Under select conditions, the approach can work at scale. What scale is most relevant depends on the conservation goal and human/environment interactions.

        Year: 2013

        Source: Evaluation and Research Technologies for Health

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          This report describes the results of a 2007 evaluation of WWF (World Wildlife Fund) PHE (Population, Health and Environment) projects sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development). The PHE sites were located in Africa and Asia, where human-environment interactions are in constant flux, human populations are growing rapidly, and they depend most directly on and affect most profoundly some of the richest forest and marine ecosystems on Earth. The PHE projects facilitated basic health care and RH (reproductive health) provision with the working thesis that improving human health and environmental conservation jointly adds value to each independently. The report also recommends future actions on sustainability and scale up of PHE approaches, improved data collection and monitoring and technical support.

          Year: 2008

          Source: World Wildlife Fund

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            This report contributes to the understanding of linkages between population dynamics, climate change, and sustainable development in Malawi, a country that typifies the core population and climate change challenges highlighted above. The report presents analyses of key population and climate change challenges that Malawi is facing, and identifies opportunities for enhancing integrated approaches to address these issues in Malawi based on an assessment of the policy and program landscape. The report is aimed at helping policymakers, donors, and civil society understand the importance of prioritizing population issues and climate change in development planning and resource allocation, and the need for integrated responses to these challenges in order to ensure sustainable development in Malawi.

            Year: 2012

            Source: PAI | African Institute for Development Policy

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              The combined effects of climate change and population dynamics in Kenya are increasing food insecurity, environmental degradation, and poverty. However, these two issues are not prioritized and addressed together in the country’s development plans. The African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) and Population Action International (PAI) conducted a study in 2012 to assess the landscape for integrating population and climate change in Kenyan development policies and strategies.

              Year: 2012

              Source: PAI | African Institute for Development Policy

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                This report calls on governments, donors, and civil society to invest more in population and climate change work, to address the two issues together in policies and programs, and to build the technical capacity to develop programs and research. Ensuring women in sub-Saharan Africa who wish to avoid pregnancy have access to family planning can reduce population pressures and reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts. It can also help meet other development goals, including reducing poverty and maternal mortality, and improving education.

                Year: 2012

                Source: PAI | African Institute for Development Policy

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                  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

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                    PAI’s Population and Climate Change Program produced this working paper which reviews 41 National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) for Climate Change submitted by least developed countries (LDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as of May 2009. The review found that 37 of the NAPAs link high and rapid population growth to climate change. However, only six plans clearly mention consideration for slowing population growth or investing in reproductive health/family planning (RH/FP) among their adaptation priority responses. Only two country NAPAs propose integrating FP and RH elements with priority adaptation interventions. The working paper presents conclusions and five recommendations for LDC governments to consider as they refine and implement the NAPAs, such as adopting multisectoral approaches to adaptation projects and offering both short and long term projects. The paper also provides an annex describing the NAPA process, including guidelines for development, implementation and financing of the plans.

                    Year: 2009

                    Source: PAI

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