Do Population-Health-Environment (PHE) initiatives work? Evidence from WWF-sponsored projects in Africa and Asia

Do Population-Health-Environment (PHE) initiatives work? It offers to combine solutions to population-environment (PE) together with health-environment (HE) for the global conservation of natural resources in developing countries. In doing so, PHE recognizes the importance of considering “conservation, health, and family planning interventions” in the management of some of the world’s most impoverished as well as ecologically rich environments (Hahn et al. 2011). In this paper I probe the potential effectiveness of integrated PHE investments for conservation outcomes. The evaluation was conducted in 2007 in WWF high priority marine and terrestrial conservation sites with PHE programs in Philippines, Nepal, India, Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya, Cameroon and the Central African Republic. I interviewed 754 individuals: WWF staff, health and environment partners and local men and women in individual and focus-group interactions. Quantitative and qualitative results indicate diverse, and in some cases dramatic, improvements in maternal and child health and conservation measures that appeared to synergized by the integrative PHE approach. Results also point toward the importance of investing in livelihoods in tandem with PHE interventions.