Why PHE?
More than 1 billion people live in ecological hotspots, many of which are remote areas of critically important biodiversity under intense pressure from human activity. Conservation work is usually located in these remote areas to protect the remaining biodiversity. In the developing world, the communities in these remote areas often suffer from ill health because of limited access to health services or family planning. These communities also tends to suffer from poor nutrition, water supplies or sanitation. Inadequate health care in these communities is usually because of economic struggles. Livelihoods in the rural communities depends on natural resources and small-scale agriculture, which can force people to use natural resources unsustainably because of pressure such as rapid population growth or health issues. This can be damaging to ecosystems and the biodiversity in these rural areas.
Conversely, people's health relies on the health of their environment. Their surrounding ecosystem provides them with goods and services such as water, food, medicine, fuel wood, building materials, and other resources. Damage or disruption of these natural goods and services can have severe consequences for human health.
Projects that take the PHE approach work to create healthier communities and ecosystems. These projects aim to bring better health services to remote communities to improve participation in conservation efforts. PHE projects also promote family planning services to help slow population growth that can put pressure on natural resources. That means PHE approaches strive to simultaneously improve access to health services while helping communities manage their natural resources in ways that improve their health and livelihood even as they protect the environment. Beyond this, the PHE approach also targets synergies between human health and ecosystem health by including a wide spectrum of development and conservation targets such as the sustainable management of natural resources, improving livelihoods, food security and nutrition, and by maintaining or restoring habitats and ecosystem functions. By focusing on the synergy between communities and their environment, the PHE approach conserves biodiversity while at the same time improving environmental health conditions for the local people. PHE is effective at achieving a wide range of positive results over multiple sectors.
History of PHE
In the late 1980s conservation organizations and practitioners began to realize the benefits of improving the quality of life for people by managing biodiversity and natural resources. These projects were initially called integrated conservation and development projects (ICDP) and addressed a wide variety of community development needs. At the end of the 1990s it was realized that ICDPs were not achieving conservation or development goals as successfully as anticipated. This was because the scope of ICDPs was often too broad. One of the lessons learned from ICDP attempts was that the success of the projects depended on the ability to focus on key interventions and avoid excessive complexity. From the lessons learned from early ICDPs the conservation sector gave birth to the PHE approach with a new generation of integrated projects.
Program designers began to realize that efforts to conserve biological diversity (biodiversity) in developing countries were most successful in long-term indicators when local people perceived their efforts as serving their economic and cultural interests. This gave birth to the integrated development approach. To achieve success it was found that ICDPs had to consider the linkage between conservation and development objectives in every unique place that the project was implemented. The first step to determining the linkages is to consider where the conservation and economic development goals intersect. Development interventions should then be introduced where this intersection occurs.
One of the most important lessons learned from ICDPs in the last 20 years was the failure to equitably involve projected beneficiaries as partners in all phases of project implementation, from design through evaluation, has led to consistently disappointing project results. It must be recognized that local participants are not a homogenous group of community members but differ widely in terms of access and dependency of resources, economic positions and their sensitivity to environmental changes. Lessons learned from past ICDPs have led the design of the stakeholder analysis where individuals or groups vested in the project are identified and incorporated into all stages of project design and implementation.
Drawing on what was learned from ICDPs, the conservation sector piloted the PHE approach during the 1990s with the first generation of PHE integrated projects. Since then USAID (the United States Agency for International Development), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and the Summit Foundation have worked to strengthen the approach. The PHE approach has pushed on with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in mind. As the PHE approach advances it has demonstrated to have the kind of synergies needed to reach these goals.
Past PHE Project Profiles
Successful Communities from Ridge to Reef, Kenya: This project was implemented in an area designated a UNESCO reserve in the Kiunga National Marine Reserve. The reserve has outstanding marine biodiversity of over 11,000 species, 60-70% of which are endemic to the Indo-Pacific Ocean. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) with funding from USAID, was able to provide communities that depend on the reserve's resources access to family planning through a mobile clinic. Members of the community began to actively participate in conservation activities once they knew WWF was willing to help them meet basic health needs.
Healthy Families, Health Forests, Cambodia: When refugees from the Cambodia/Vietnam war in the 1970s returned home, they found their land had been destroyed through logging and agriculture. With USAID support, Conservation International helped the Khmer Daeum refugees to replenish their land and supplied the refugees with their first-ever access to family planning. Healthy families were able to develop long-term plans for sustainable land use and local women created associations that mobilized the community to increase income earning opportunities and strengthen participation in conservation activities.
Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management (IPOPCORM), Philippines Rapid population growth in the Philippines has led to deforestation and destruction of coral reefs. Only 3% of original forest cover remains and only 5% of coral reefs are intact and in pristine condition. This uncontrollable population growth, coupled with the depletion of coastal resources led to the development of the Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management (IPOPCORM) project with support from USAID and PATH Foundation Philippines Inc. The IPOPCORM Project focuses on communities in the Philippines' most endangered coastal reef areas and works to improve food security and livelihoods by promoting family planning and sustainable fisheries management. The program has earned strong support from local mayors and community members who have appreciated IPOPCORM's focus on improving livelihoods.
Population and Resource Management in Madagascar Africa's greatest concentration of unique plant and animal species can be found in Madagascar. These species have been historically threatened by rapid population growth leading to deforestation. USAID/Madagascar planned for the development of an innovative population and environment program in the region that linked community-based natural resource management with interventions to improve family health and planning while allowing for better preservation of the island's unique biodiversity. The program had worked with local communities in order to support family planning services, sustainable agriculture, good governance, improved food production, alternative livelihoods, and environmental education.
Community-Centered Conservation Efforts in Tanzania The Jane Goodall Institute, with funding from USAID/Tanzania, constructed the TACARE project to eliminate poverty and support sustainable livelihoods, while alleviating the depletion of natural resources in the country. The community-based approach aimed to improve the livelihoods in Tanzanian communities while promoting conservation and an understanding of the need to preserve biodiversity. This approach provides family planning methods, information, and counseling by community volunteers that has resulted in a greater acceptance of family planning. With funding from USAID/Washington the TACARE approach is being replicated in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Andean Highlands of Ecuador A collaborative operations research effort by CEMOPLAF, World Neighbors, and the University of Michigan's Population-Environment Fellows Program was supported by USAID. The study showed quantified benefits of integrating family planning efforts and information with agriculture and natural resource management in the area.
"Conservation Through Public Health" With funding from USAID, Conservation Through Public Health, a Ugandan-based NGO and US registered non-profit added family planning to its integrated One Health program promoting wildlife health and community-based health care to prevent zoonotic disease transmission between people, wildlife and livestock. CTPH has received recognition for having a model PHE program promoting gorilla conservation and community health and development in and around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, SW Uganda.
Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, groups and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where it is possible, to repair damage and reverse trends.
The National Estuarine Research Reserve System is a network of 30 protected areas established by partnerships between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and coastal states. The reserves represent different biogeographic regions of the United States. The National Estuarine Research Reserve System protects more than 1.3 million acres of coastal and estuarine habitats for long-term research, water-quality monitoring, education, and coastal stewardship.
Adaptive management, also known as adaptive resource management or adaptive environmental assessment and management, is a structured, iterative process of robust decision making in the face of uncertainty, with an aim to reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring. In this way, decision making simultaneously meets one or more resource management objectives and, either passively or actively, accrues information needed to improve future management. Adaptive management is a tool which should be used not only to change a system, but also to learn about the system. Because adaptive management is based on a learning process, it improves long-run management outcomes. The challenge in using the adaptive management approach lies in finding the correct balance between gaining knowledge to improve management in the future and achieving the best short-term outcome based on current knowledge. This approach has more recently been employed in implementing international development programs.
Sustainable forest management (SFM) is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management must keep a balance between the three main pillars: ecological, economic and socio-cultural. The goal of sustainable forestry is to allow for a balance to be found between making use of trees while maintaining natural patterns of disturbance and regeneration. The forestry industry mitigates climate change by boosting carbon storage in growing trees and soils and improving the sustainable supply of renewable raw materials via sustainable forest management.
Forest management is a branch of forestry concerned with overall administrative, legal, economic, and social aspects, as well as scientific and technical aspects, such as silviculture, protection, and forest regulation. This includes management for timber, aesthetics, recreation, urban values, water, wildlife, inland and nearshore fisheries, wood products, plant genetic resources, and other forest resource values. Management objectives can be for conservation, utilisation, or a mixture of the two. Techniques include timber extraction, planting and replanting of different species, building and maintenance of roads and pathways through forests, and preventing fire.
Landscape-scale conservation is a holistic approach to landscape management, aiming to reconcile the competing objectives of nature conservation and economic activities across a given landscape. Landscape-scale conservation may sometimes be attempted because of climate change. It can be seen as an alternative to site based conservation.
Natural resource management (NRM) is the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship).
Integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs), are biodiversity conservation projects with rural development components. It is an approach that aspires to combine social development with conservation goals. These projects look to deal with biodiversity conservation objectives through the use of socio-economic investment tools. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), first introduced ICDPs in the mid 1980s. They wanted to attend to some of the problems associated with the “fines and fences” (non-participatory) approach to conservation.
Namibia is one of few countries in the world to specifically address habitat conservation and protection of natural resources in their constitution. Article 95 states, "The State shall actively promote and maintain the welfare of the people by adopting international policies aimed at the following: maintenance of ecosystems, essential ecological processes, and biological diversity of Namibia, and utilization of living natural resources on a sustainable basis for the benefit of all Namibians, both present and future.".
Earthwatch Institute is an international environmental charity. It was founded in 1971 as Educational Expeditions International by Bob Citron and Clarence Truesdale. Earthwatch Institute supports Ph.D. researchers internationally and conducts over 100,000 hours of research annually using the Citizen Science methodology. Earthwatch's mission statement states that the organization "connects people with scientists worldwide to conduct environmental research and empowers them with the knowledge they need to conserve the planet." As such, it is one of the global underwriters of scientific field research in climate change, archaeology, paleontology, marine life, biodiversity, ecosystems and wildlife. For over fifty years, Earthwatch has raised funds to recruit individuals, students, teachers, and corporate fellows to participate in field research to understand nature's response to accelerating global change.
Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches implicitly for millennia, ecosystem management emerged explicitly as a formal concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems and of humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.
Community-based management (CBM) is a bottom up approach of organization which can be facilitated by an upper government or NGO structure but it aims for local stakeholder participation in the planning, research, development, management and policy making for a community as a whole. The decentralization of managing tactics enables local people to deal with the unique social, political and ecological problems their community might face and find solutions ideal to their situation. Overwhelming national or local economic, political and social pressures can affect the efficiency of CBM as well as its long term application. CBM varies across spatial and temporal scales to reflect the ever-changing distinctive physical and/or human environment it is acting within. While the specifics of each practice might differ, existing research maintains that community based management, when implemented properly, is incredibly beneficial not only for the health of the environment, but also for the well-being of the stakeholders.
Velondriake, meaning “to live with the sea” in the Vezo dialect of the Malagasy language, is a locally managed marine area (LMMA). Established in 2006 in southwest Madagascar, Velondriake is home to over 7,000 resident Vezo people and covers a marine and coastal area of about 64,000 ha making it one of the largest LMMAs in the western Indian Ocean. The LMMA includes extensive coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, baobab forests, spiny forest and other threatened habitats. The LMMA includes five permanent coral reef reserves, two permanent mangrove reserves, and numerous periodic fisheries closures (PFCs), primarily for octopus on reefs and for mud crab in mangroves.
Blue Ventures is a registered charity focused on nurturing locally led marine conservation. The organisation partners with coastal communities that depend on marine resources.
Globally, Nepal is ranked fourth in terms of vulnerability to climate change. Floods spread across the foothills of the Himalayas and bring landslides, leaving tens of thousands of houses and vast areas of farmland and roads destroyed. In the 2020 edition of Germanwatch's Climate Risk Index, it was judged to be the ninth hardest-hit nation by climate calamities during the period 1999 to 2018. Nepal is a least developed country, with 28.6 percent of the population living in multidimensional poverty. Analysis of trends from 1971 to 2014 by the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) shows that the average annual maximum temperature has been increasing by 0.056 °C per year. Precipitation extremes are found to be increasing. A national-level survey on the perception-based survey on climate change reported that locals accurately perceived the shifts in temperature but their perceptions of precipitation change did not converge with the instrumental records. Data reveals that more than 80 percent of property loss due to disasters is attributable to climate hazards, particularly water-related events such as floods, landslides and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).
Healthy Land and Water Limited is the peak environment group for South East Queensland.
Community Based Mangrove Management (CBMM) is a sustainable approach for conserving the rapidly disappearing mangrove forests. It can be defined as community driven management and rehabilitation of mangrove forests involving resource users in the management process directly. CBMM decentralizes authority and power from government to local communities. The dual aim of CBMM is the ongoing conservation of mangroves and generation of sustainable livelihood.
Ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) encompasses a broad set of approaches to adapt to climate change. They all involve the management of ecosystems and their services to reduce the vulnerability of human communities to the impacts of climate change. The Convention on Biological Diversity defines EBA as "the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy to help people to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change".
Sustainable Development Goal 15 is about "Life on land". One of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2015, the official wording is: "Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss". The Goal has 12 targets to be achieved by 2030. Progress towards targets will be measured by 14 indicators.
Environmentalism of the poor is a set of social movements that arise from environmental conflicts when impoverished people struggle against powerful state or private interests that threaten their livelihood, health, sovereignty, and culture. Part of the global environmental justice movement, it differs from mainstream environmentalism by emphasizing social justice issues instead of emphasizing conservation and eco-efficiency. It is becoming an increasingly important force for global sustainability.
