An increasing number of conservation and health activists are beginning to understand the value of an integrated approach to development. Without addressing the needs of people, conservation measures will not be very effective, and conversely, without conservation, people lose vital natural resources and suffer consequences to their health.

An integrated development model, often referred to as PHE, or population, health, and environment, is motivating Sierra Club volunteers and other activists to better address this relationship. You could say PHE is “new kind of conservation,” a way to inspire people to support change that benefits local communities as well as protects iconic species.

Over my years of volunteering with the Sierra Club, I have seen a small number of dedicated people make a difference empowering people and protecting the planet. The work of several of these activists will be highlighted in a webinar next week. Their examples of innovative conservation may inspire a new generation of environmentalists to think about how to achieve their goals with community development in mind.

Tanzania: Empowering a Masai Community

Karen Gaia Pitts, a Sierra Club activist, considers herself “a long-time student of sustainability in developing countries, and of family planning and women’s empowerment.” This year, she and her partner Ben Parks, after visiting Tanzania, created the Masai Harmonial Development and Sustainability organization to help lift a Masai community in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area out of poverty.

The village of Emburbul currently faces a combination of challenges. There is conflict with the authorities who run the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, pitting conservation against human rights. Because they are part of the culture and tradition, the Masai are allowed to live in the area, but others are not. The increasing numbers of people and cattle is causing alarm among officials, however, and they have threatened to remove some or all of the Masai without providing an alternative place for them to live.

A main goal of the Masai Harmonial Development and Sustainability organization is to empower Masai girls and women to have a greater say over their lives and bodies, including reproduction. “I was very surprised to hear that a Masai group was asking for family planning, and that a Masai woman stood up in front of the assembly and asked for it,” Pitts says. Yet in Emburbul, girls are married as early as age 12, and often die in childbirth, so the demand should not be shocking.

Some initial efforts of Pitts and her partner address access to family planning, health care, and girls’ education, and they will soon be working on interventions to provide alternative livelihoods for women so households are less reliant on raising cattle. Potential projects involve bead making, raising chickens and goats, bee keeping, and leatherwork.

Interventions that improve health, livelihoods, and the environment are important because “people’s quality of life depends on a good water supply, education, family planning, good health, successful livelihoods, and the tools to improve their own situation,” says Pitts. By relieving environmental pressures on the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, she believes the Masai Harmonial Development and Sustainability organization will help reduce conflict with park authorities.

Uganda: Saving Our Closest Living Relatives

The Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, founded in 1998 by Dr. Jane Goodall and a group of Ugandan trustees, has a mission to promote the understanding, appreciation, and conservation of chimpanzees and their habitats. Located in Uganda on East Africa’s Lake Victoria, Ngamba is home to 46 orphaned chimpanzees that have been rescued from being turned into bush meat or sold into the illegal wildlife trade. The chimpanzees live on 95 acres of pristine forest habitat.

For almost two years, Chris Austria, a wildlife conservationist, photographer, and Sierra Club volunteer, has been involved with Ngamba Island. Though based in East Africa, he has lately been traveling in the United States to fundraise and raise awareness about the sanctuary through audio-visual presentations. Much of Austria’s presentation focuses on the burgeoning illegal wildlife trade, and how chimpanzees are captured for private collections, laboratories, disreputable zoos, and circuses around the world. Though humans share 98.7 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, we have made them an endangered species.

The Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust (CSWCT), which manages Ngamba Island, understands that providing sanctuary to chimps addresses only part of the problem. CSWCT conducts development work for communities in western Uganda that live alongside chimpanzee populations, and plays an active role in mitigating human-chimpanzee conflict by teaching people how to peacefully co-exist and even benefit from them.

CSWCT has established tree nurseries, distributed seedlings for the community’s reforestation projects, and helped forest owners learn the importance of preserving wilderness areas instead of cutting them down for timber or cash crops. CSWCT also invests in community development programs that include environmental education in schools, support for alternative livelihoods, and water and sanitation projects.

Austria notes that “conservation and community development are inextricably entwined. In order to implement sustainable conservation strategies, the needs of the communities must be met. They have to be our partners.”

Indonesia: “Health and Nature Everlasting”

My own experience as a volunteer with the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment Program and director of Transition Earth echoes that of Pitts and Austria.

In a remote pocket of Indonesian Borneo, I visited a small organization last year working with local communities to improve human health and protect a fragile environment. Alam Sehat Lestari, which translates to “health and nature everlasting” and goes by the initials ASRI, works in the town of Sukadana and surrounding communities, which borders Gunung Palung National Park, home to an estimated 2,500 orangutans. Though community members by and large want to protect the forest and understand its value, poverty has driven many to take up illegal logging in order to meet basic needs.

ASRI’s leaders related to the Sierra Club delegation how they found a clear demand for health care, ambulances, mobile health clinics, and organic farming. They responded with an integrated model that incentivizes conservation by tracking illegal logging, rewarding those that participate with cheaper health services, and encouraging alternative livelihoods by taking some payments in the form of non-cash contributions, like time spent planting seedlings.

The founders of the clinic understand that they have to address short-term needs to begin taking steps to improve the long-term wellbeing of people and their environment. They not only see that alternative livelihoods are needed, but help provide them in a systematic way.

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These stories represent a new way of seeing conservation for many activists – of thinking of human and natural systems as co-existing pieces. For many of the wild places left in the world, development pressures are inescapable. PHE and other integrated development efforts aim to improve the lives of the bottom billion while conserving as much of the natural systems that we all depend on as possible.

To learn more, please join the above activists, along with the director of the Sierra Club’s Global Population and Environment program, for a webinar on September 13, 2016, 3:00pm – 4:00pm EDT.