Gay Today: Technology

Linking Population & the Environment

Compiled By GayToday

The linkages between population and environmental change are increasingly clear. But is it possible to promote both reproductive health and environmental sustainability within one development project? If so, how effective is this linked approach?

In Forging the Link: Emerging Accounts of Population and Environment Work in Communities, authors Carolyn Gibb Vogel and Robert Engelman summarize existing documentation of an innovative approach to meeting the needs of communities in developing countries for both reproductive health services and natural resource conservation.

The first community-based population and environment (CBPE) projects were created by environmental and community-development organizations working in remote rural areas, in response to requests from women in communities for family planning and related health services.

Having analyzed dozens of documents that reflect the past 25 years of programs using the CBPE approach, Population Action International (PAI) finds high levels of acceptance of this concept among those who work on these projects and those in the communities served.

The report explores the challenges of linking health and resource conservation efforts through the words and work of project participants themselves.

Robert Engelman, co-author of the study and director of PAI's population and environment program says:

"Connecting people's desire to conserve their local environment with their desire to plan the timing of births in good health seems to work well for those involved in these projects…The documentation we've assembled is an encouraging early step in evaluating the experience of this linkage."

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Related Sites:
Population Action International
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In community-based population and environment projects, one or more collaborating organizations respond to community requests for help in both conserving local natural resources and providing reproductive health services, such as family planning and maternal and child health care.

Over the past seven years, Population Action International has identified and described 48 projects or groups of projects linking these activities in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Among the benefits of the linkage reported by project workers and participants is that the combination of services:

Are understood and appreciated by community members because they represent a holistic approach to community needs;

Engage ongoing community involvement, in part by relying on local community members to do much of the work;

May work synergistically to improve access to and use of environmental and reproductive health services;

May improve the overall condition of women;

May encourage men to become more active in reproductive health; and

May be more cost effective than comparable single-sector approaches.

The CBPE approach is also gaining acceptance in the international arena, according to the report's authors. In March of this year, country delegations involved in the five-year review of the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development endorsed the concept of holistic and community-based sustainable development approaches such as those in which reproductive health and natural resource conservation services are combined.

In April, the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Population Fund signed an agreement to strengthen their cooperation in addressing population-environment links.

Forging the Link: Emerging Accounts of Population and Environment Work in Communities builds on earlier PAI research describing and documenting the spread of the CBPE approach. Plan and Conserve: A Source Book on Linking Population and Environment Services in Communities, published in 1998, profiles 42 community projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America.