Human Health and the Environment

Overview

Projects

Strategy

Threats

Places

CI Philippines delivered goats to indigenous families in Baggao for supplemental livelihood.

Our Projects

Our experience over the last 21 years has shown that conservation will not succeed in the absence of people-oriented strategies to enhance stewardship of the land and natural resources. Since the 1990s, we have worked with communities to empower them to conserve biodiversity while improving their health and wellbeing at the same time.

CI and partners across the world have worked to improve the daily lives of remote, vulnerable populations living in some of the most biodiversity-rich environments on the planet. We have increased human wellbeing, while at the same time conserving vital biodiversity. We have attempted to bridge the gaps that continue to separate the fields of conservation, health, population, and development by promoting integrated approaches that recognize conservation as a social issue.

Each country program has adopted an integrated conservation and health objective and has selected partners based on existing relations in the target communities and complementary skills to existing CI staff and activities.

	Healthy Families, Healthy Forests Through this integrated health and conservation project, CI worked in the most remote, biologically diverse areas of the world: Cambodia, the Philippines and Madagascar.
	BALANCED Project Building on almost a decade of USAID investments in PHE global leadership and field-based projects, the BALANCED project will promote wider adoption and use of effective PHE approaches worldwide.

Successes

	Health and Conservation in the Cardamoms: Lessons Learned from the CI-CARE Partnership Under the Health Families, Healthy Forests project, CI Cambodia and CARE-Cambodia entered into a successful partnership to deliver family planning, reproductive and general health services.
	Integrating Gender into Conservation Based on our research and on-the-ground field project experiences, we acknowledge that women and men have gender-defined roles and responsibilities that affect their ability to engage in conservation activities and how the benefits and costs of conservation interventions are distributed.
	Meeting Population and Conservation Needs in Mexico's Sevla Lacandona, 2000-2006 The Selva Lacandona in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas has some of the highest levels of biological diversity in Mexico and the Mesoamerican biological corridor. This vast reserve of floral and faunal species is under increasing pressure from rapid population growth and unsustainable natural resource utilization patterns. With support from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, from 2000 to 2006, CI implemented an integrated health and conservation project in the Selva Lacandona, particularly the area surrounding the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve.