The Population Reference Bureau recently published an article featuring the Africa Biodiversity Colloborative Groups’ best practices for improving food security and nutrition through integrated approaches. 

“Evaluations of Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) programs have found varying degrees of effectiveness in improving human health and biodiversity outcomes. PHE approaches integrate family planning with other health and environmental interventions, with the intention of addressing the challenges that link all three sectors in a holistic manner.”

ABCG conducted a comprehensive literature review to strengthen its PHE pilot projects and further examine these linkages, the findings were shared during the Africa PHE webinar held in December 2017. The speakers, ABCG’s Global Health Linkages to Biodiversity Conservation: Population Health and Environment working group members, Jimmiel Mandima from African Wildlife Foundation and Nathalie Simoneau from World Wildlife Fund, shared that despite robust studies on the interactions between population, health, and environment, few PHE projects systematically monitor and measure the impacts of nutrition and food security on biodiversity and health outcomes.

“Some projects, however, do show evidence that their work improves biodiversity conservation through activities that promote sustainable agricultural techniques, livelihood diversification, conservation agriculture, and other interventions.”

The literature review makes the following recommendations:
1. Encourage funding of more nested, integrated programs that are transformational and have all-round lasting impacts that improve human well-being
2. Require mandatory systematic monitoring and evaluation that measures the impacts of nutrition and food security on biodiversity and health outcomes
3. Allow for adequate investment in process to establish baselines across the PHE aspects, and participatory clarity among the multiple entities that have to implement the integrated programs
4. Commit to long tem program cycles of up to 10 years and use funding vehicles that are not limited to sectoral silos but rather allow integrated programming

Read the entire post on the Population Reference Bureau website and listen to the webinar recording here: Improving Food Security and Nutrition Through Integrated Approaches

More information about the study is available in the literature review: Exploring Cross-Sector Linkages Between Population, Health, Environment, Nutrition, and Food Security: A Review of Best Practices and Lessons Learned