Population and Environment

Read two profiles highlighting individuals who are making significant accomplishments on the ground to improve health and conservation in critically endangered biodiversity areas.  – Ruth Siyage: Promoting Family Planning and Livelihoods for a Healthy Environment in Uganda  – Sam Rugaba: Encouraging Childhood Education and Birth Spacing as Approach to Conservation in Uganda Source: Ruth and her son in their shop in rural Uganda. Photo by CTPH.

Population, health, and environment (PHE) programs can play an important role in areas where demographic trends such as growth and migration place pressure on the environment; where degraded natural resources impact the health and livelihoods of local communities; and where a lack of effective health services, including reproductive health, threatens long-term prospects for sustainable development. The key objective of these programs is 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.

Since 1993, USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health has worked to better understand the synergistic relationship between population, health, and environment. In 2002, the PHE program expanded to include field programming in response to legislative language originally included in the FY02 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill – and repeated in all subsequent bills – stating that under the Child Survival and Health Programs Fund some portion (unspecified) of the funds for family planning/reproductive health {should be allocated} in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species. These field-based projects, often implemented by conservation organizations, have developed innovative models of integrating population, environment, and health where appropriate in and around areas of high biodiversity in 10 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

News

• New Climate Change Film Shows the Effects on Women – 09/22/11
  Population Action International's (PAI) newest documentary shows how women are coping with the effects of climate change in developing countries. Weathering Change follows women in Ethiopia, Nepal, and Peru as they struggle to care for their families while enduring crop failures and water scarcity. The film documents how family planning, girls' education, sustainable agriculture, and environmental conservation are part of the solution. As the world's population hits 7 billion in 2011, PAI calls for expanding access to contraception and empowering women to help families and communities adapt to the effects of climate change.



• Integrated Management of Coastal Resources and Human Health Yields Added Value: A Comparative Study in Palawan (Philippines) – 05/18/10
  An article published in the Journal for Environmental Conservation and co-authored by Heather D’Agnes, who works on USAID's Population, Health, and Environment programs in the Office of Population/Reproductive Health, features, for the first time, concrete evidence of the impact of integration across FP/RH and environment in a PHE project in the Philippines. The analysis demonstrates statistically significant improvement in more indicators in integrated sites which implemented family planning service delivery in an integrated manner with coastal resources management (coral reef and fisheries management) than in sites which implemented only FP/RH or coastal resource management (CRM).
  
  

Toolkits and Publications

• Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) Community-Based Distribution and Peer Education System: Train-the-Trainer Guide for Training PHE Community-Based Distributors and PHE Adult Peer Educators Working on Integrated PHE Activities
  Developed by the Building Actors and Leaders for Advancing Community Excellence in Development project staff and conservation and rural development organizations, this manual is designed to train individuals to integrate community-based family planning and health into PHE projects through the use of community-based distribution and peer education approaches. Field-tested in Tanzania, Zambia and Ethiopia, the guide uses a unique training approach where training participants "learn-by-doing", such as leading certain segments of the training themselves.
  
  
• The Population, Health, Environment Toolkit
  This toolkit is a central location for information and resources on PHE approaches. The toolkit contains an array of tools and resources for implementation of PHE projects, country and project PHE experiences, and analyses and assessments of the PHE approach. The toolkit is intended for a wide array of audiences including program managers, policymakers, researchers, and academics and educators.
  
  

	Healthy People, Healthy Ecosystems [PDF, 3.6MB] This new manual produced by the WWF outlines ways conservation organizations can integrate health and voluntary family planning into conservation projects and how this approach can both improve health and reduce unsustainable pressures on the environment.

• USAID Fact Sheet: Balancing People and the Environment to Promote Resilient Communities - January 2008 [PDF, 214KB]
  
  
• Incorporating Gender into PHE Strategies: Experiences from Conservation International - September 2008 [PDF, 314KB]
  The document highlights Conservation International’s (CI) experiences incorporating gender into PHE project strategies. The information was derived from several research documents and project reports produced by CI staff and partners during the 2005-2008 phase of the project.
  
  
• Health and Conservation in the Cardamoms in Cambodia - 06/30/08 [PDF, 405KB]
  This report explores lessons learned from four years of conservation and health care interventions by CI in partnership with Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) Cambodia in the Cardamom Mountains Region of southwestern Cambodia.
  
  
• Guinea Biodiversity and Tropical Forests 118/119 Assessment [PDF, 1MB]
  This assessment looks specifically at how USAID is addressing threats to biodiversity and forestry resources in Guineau. USAID has a long history working on natural resource management, environment, and agriculture in Guinea, and many aspects of its current programming address the threats, especially those related to co-management of classified forests in Guinea.
  
  
• Linking Health, Population and the Environment in Madagascar [PDF, 297KB]
  Read a two-page fact sheet about USAID’s Environmental Health Project in Madagascar which linked and integrated projects in health, population, and natural resource management.
  
  

USAID Success Stories

• Bringing Health Care to the Cardamoms - June 2007
  Conservation International and CARE, a nongovernmental development agency, opened a clinic in Thma Bang, Cambodia in 2004 with a grant from USAID. More than two years later, the clinic – still Thma Bang district’s only – provides primary health care to nearly 2,500 people in Cambodia’s remote Central Cardamom Mountains.
  



• 	With funding from USAID, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) implemented a PHE project in Madagascar's Spiny Forest. The project addresses the links between population pressures, lack of access to needed health services, and the environment. Read more Source: WWF

  Population, Health, and Environment Program in Madagascar - April 2007
  Read how WWF, with funding from USAID, partnered with Action Santé Organisation Secours (ASOS) to implement a PHE project that aims to address the problems in Spiny Forest by building community awareness of family planning options, providing counseling and access, and simultaneously initiating sound natural resources management practices and sustainable livelihood strategies.
  


• Integrating Population, Health, and Environment in Cambodia - April 2007
  The Cardamom Mountains of Southwest Cambodia are experiencing rising levels of forest destruction and wildlife hunting, which is threatening to undermine the natural and indigenous values of the region. Read more about what is causing this and how USAID and Conservation International are helping to fix it.



• The Chandani Women's Group in the Kiunga Marine National Reserve (KMNR), Kenya - April 2007
  This program's goal is to improve the health and quality of life of the local Bajuni community. The community’s well-being directly contributes to the conservation of the KMNR’s marine resources.
  


• Successful Communities from Ridge to Reef - December 2008
  Read about the USAID-funded PHE project that provides reproductive health services in key areas where population growth has serious impacts on natural resources and biodiversity.
• Read the April 2007 report
  


• The Sea is Our Life - April 2007
  Read how the IPOPCORM Project Integrated Family Planning and Reproductive Health into Coastal Resource Management in the Philippines.
  
  
• Linking Family Planning and the Environment in Madagascar - April 2004
  An account of one successful USAID program in Madagascar that has family planning and environmental components.

Related Links and Resources

• The BALANCED Project
  USAID launches its flagship project to promote evidence based PHE approaches.  In 2008 USAID, in partnership with Coastal Resources Center at the University of Rhode Island, launched the five year BALANCED (Building Actors and Leaders for Advancing Community Excellence in Development) Project. This project has been tasked with promoting the wider adoption and use of PHE approaches by building the capacity of organizations to implement PHE programs, synthesize and communicate state of the art PHE knowledge and information, and piloting and scaling up PHE field programs with a focus on Africa and Asia.
  
  
• Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP)
  This USAID-funded program brings international policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to Washington, D.C., to address the public and fellow experts on issues such as population, health and environment.
  • ECSP 13th Annual Report
  • Subscribe to the ECSP Monthly E-Newsletter
    
    
• Linking Population, Health, and Environment in the Philippines (Podcast)
  In this podcast, ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko discusses integrated development approaches in the Philippines with Roger-Mark De Souza, who is the director of foundation and corporate relations at the Sierra Club. De Souza shares his experiences of how local communities have successfully integrated environmental conservation and population issues to alleviate poverty and improve their quality of life.
  
  
• USAID and Jane Goodall Explore Ways to Improve the Health of Families and Forests in the Congo Basin - February 2005
  A summary of the partnership between USAID and Jane Goodall that seeks to improve the health of local populations in the Congo Basin through conservation programs.

• Conservation International’s Population and Environment Program
  A summary on the importance of recognizing the connection between population growth and environmental devastation.


• The Population Reference Bureau's (PRB) Population, Health and the Environment Program
  Read about how PRB is understanding and addressing the issues of Population, Health, and Environment.
  

Archived Events

• New Population, Health, and Environment Alliance - Signing of the Memorandum of Understanding - 10/08/08
  On October 8, 2008, USAID, Johnson & Johnson, and World Wildlife Fund formed the first major global development alliance to focus on an integrated approach to tackling population, health, and environment issues.
  
  • Read more on AllAfrica.com
    


• East Africa Population, Health, and Environment Network Forms at Regional Conference, Advances Integrated Development - 11/16/07
  Read about the new East Africa Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) Network that was launched on November 16, 2007, at the Integrated Development for East Africa conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. USAID supported a two-day workshop on coalition building, which served as a foundation for the network.
  


• Earth Day 2007 - 04/21/07
  With the theme, Celebrating People and the Planet, USAID highlighted its Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) programs that work toward a sustainable balance between people, animals, and the planet in regions critically important to the conservation of biologically diverse ecosystems.