This issue of the BALANCED Project newsletter examines how PHE approaches contribute to the acheivement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with a focus on gender, maternal and child health and environmental sustainability. The introductory article sets the international policy context concerning the importance of integrated health, development and conservation inititatives.

The Population-Health-Environment (PHE) Alliance Project, implemented by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) from 2008 to 2011, with support from the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health and Johnson & Johnson, aimed to change that practice, and by doing so, deepen the sector’s understanding of the value of the PHE approach for conservation, and how the sector could better measure that value.

Conservation organizations have integrated family planning into site-based conservation activities in selected countries for almost two decades yet lacked strong evidence of the approach’s value to conservation. Today this approach has come to be known as the integrated “population, health and environment” approach, or “PHE.” Drawing on lessons from early integrated conservation and development projects (known as ICDPs), PHE projects aimed to be more targeted yet still integrated.

This policy brief examines the complex challenges of reducing poverty, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and coping with a changing climate. Although rapid population growth makes it more difficult for poor countires to cope with a changing climate, the brief argues that investments in family planning and reproductive health and empowering women can help address these issues. The bottom line is that family planning is a win-win for women and the planet.

As part of its global Population-Health-Environment (PHE) Alliance from 2008 to 2011, World Wildlife Fund-US undertook a PHE learning agenda, with the support of USAID and Johnson & Johnson. This WWF-Nepal case study was produced by gender consultant Nancy Diamond to explore the impact of PHE activities of the WWF-Nepal Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) Project on women’s empowerment to inform the global PHE community.

This policy brief calls for the global community to explore all available opportunities to reduce global warming pollution and create more sustainable societies by focusing on a wider range of development solutions. Building on recent studies exploring the relationships between reducing popualtion growth and decreasing greenhouse gas emmissions, the brief calls for increasing investments in reaching remote communities with family planniing and reproductive health services and investing in women.

Sometimes when climate change is discussed certain aspects are overlooked, such as how can individual behavior undermine or contribute to the global effort to address climate change? And how will climate change affect individuals including men, women, and the poor? A Copenhagen agreement that helps people to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt to climate change by harnessing the insight and creativity of women and men would launch a genuinely effective long-term global strategy to deal with climate change.

The Population Environment (PE) program of Conservation International (CI) recognizes the importance of incorporating gender roles and responsibilities into activities to improve conservation in key biodiversity areas around the world. By definition, gender is the economic, social, political, and cultural attributes and opportunities associated with being male or female. Gender relates to the socially constructed differences and relations between men and women within a given context.

This article provides a review of PHE efforts in the Philippines and explains how addressing gender issues has been an important factor in attaining project results. Sixty percent of Philippine’s population resides in the coastal zone. Women and men in coastal communities depend chiefly on the sea for subsistence. Coastal populations are young and expanding at rates that exceed regional and national averages. Conflicts among users of coastal resources are escalating.

This paper addresses the rationale for including gender in Population, Health, and Nutrition Programs. It define gender and several aspects of gender in ways that make it easier to incorporate in programs, and suggests a framework for identifying and addressing gender-related constraints to achieving program objectives, using a detailed set of illustrative examples. The authors address a number of obstacles that project designers are likely to encounter, and offer indicators that have proven useful in monitoring of changes as a result of addressing gender issues.