Healthy People, Healthy Ecosystems: A Manual on Integrating Health and Family Planning into Conservation Projects

This manual outlines an approach that integrates health and voluntary family planning into conservation projects, developing synergies that improve the health of both people and ecosystems. The approach, called the population-health-environment (PHE) approach, involves conservation organisations partnering with the health sector. According to the manual, taking advantage of synergies between human and ecosystem health can improve maternal and child health; enable couples to have the number of children they want, when they want them; reduce unsustainable pressures on the environment; promote sustainable ecosystem services such as reliable water supplies; and often improve community food security and livelihoods.

The manual draws on the experiences, successes, and lessons from the last five years of PHE work in World Wildlife Fund/Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and other organisations. Its main audience is conservation field project practitioners, aiming to help them develop new PHE projects and refine existing ones. The manual can be used for:

• integrating new health and family planning activities into existing community conservation projects.
• refining existing population-health-environment projects.
• developing health and family planning activities as an entry point for subsequent conservation activities with communities.