Cambodia is a young democracy in transition. It has the highest rate of urbanization in Southeast Asia, but the lowest percentage of current urban dwellers and widespread poverty. The Mekong River, on which millions of rural Cambodians rely, is being dammed at a rapid pace, both upstream, beyond the country’s borders, and within. Aided by weak land laws, both foreign and domestic industrial forces have staked claim to large swaths of the country for logging and rubber plantations, displacing thousands.

I’ve just returned from the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Ethiopia where integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs had a strong showing. More than 16 sessions over three days at the conference incorporated PHE themes, including panels on communicating complexity around family planning, conservation and human rights; how PHE helps accelerate the fertility transition in rural Ethiopia; and meaningful ways of linking population and family planning to climate change and sustainable development in Africa. Blue Ventures, one of PHE’s strongest voices, was given one of the first ever Excellence in Leadership for Family Planning awards. At this global meeting of family planning experts, PHE was clearly and squarely at the center.

This year’s International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) happened to coincide with the UN’s annual climate change summit. Perhaps it’s apt then that one of the organizations recognized for excellence is helping to bridge the gap between the environment and family planning communities.

In the latter half of last century, Thailand and other East Asian countries successfully capitalized on shifts in their age structures to gain a boost in economic productivity, a phenomenon known as the demographic dividend. Today, despite the hitherto sluggish pace of Africa’s demographic transition, scholars and politicians remain hopeful that similar changes on the continent may lead to faster development in coming decades. [Video Below]

“Gorillas are very good at family planning; if we were like them, we’d be much better off,” said wildlife veterinarian Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka at the Wilson Center on September 26. The Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) CEO and founder is celebrating 10 years of population, health, and environment (PHE) work in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing health and livelihood interventions to people while protecting mountain gorillas around Virunga and Bwindi Impenetrable National Parks. [Video Below]

In 2009, economist Jeffrey Sachs, alongside more than 20 eminent scholars from different fields, highlighted the importance of biodiversity for human well-being in a policy commentary published in Science. They noted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) included a target to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of species loss, and they also noted that it was one of the MDG targets that was most off-track. “Our lack of progress toward the 2010 target,” they said, “could undermine achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction in the long term.” The 2010 target was missed, and today species are moving toward extinction at an ever faster pace. Last week’s announcement confirming the extinction of Africa’s western black rhino is the latest sad example of this trend.