Connecting a Community’s Ecosystem to Family Planning and Reproductive Health
The Twin-Bakhaw (short for bakawan, which means “mangroves”) project provides a unique approach to advocating for gender equality and sexual and reproductive health services in fisheries management, within indigenous populations. This 10-month project operates under a scheme that each newborn in the family will have a “twin” mangrove seedling, which the newborn’s family must plant and nurture until it is fully grown, thus the name Twin-Bakhaw. The project’s success shows how important integrating family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) interventions are for long-term environmental protection, food security, and disaster mitigation. PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., leads the project, which is implemented in two barangays (villages) in the two municipalities of the Calamianes Island Group (CIG)—Barangay Buenavista in the municipality of Coron and Barangay Barangonan in the municipality of Linapacan. The CIG, one of the most bio-diverse groups of islands in the Philippines, is home to the Tagbanuas, one of the oldest indigenous populations in the country.
Various studies have long shown the correlation between growing population and depletion of natural resources (attributed to overfishing, illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing practices) may eventually lead to food insecurity—a social problem that the world is continuously working on, given the commitment of governments to zero hunger by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Women, particularly those in poor and vulnerable communities such as indigenous populations, face the burden of food insecurity. Dependent on natural resources for food and livelihood and given the responsibility for their family’s health and nutrition, women are key contributing factors to both sound environmental management and the community’s health status.
The Philippines has long responded to this complex relationship between community health and the environment through its use of a multi-sectoral population, health, and environment (PHE) approach. This Twin-Bakhaw project, with its unique approach to enhancing indigenous women and female youths’ roles in fisheries management and promoting gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights (SRH), adds to the Philippines’ decades of experience in PHE programs. (For more information on the rich history of PHE in the Philippines and PHE implementation guidance and lessons learned, check out this recently released publication entitled History of Population, Health and Environment Approaches in the Philippines.)
Grace Gayoso (Gayo) Pasion, a Knowledge SUCCESS Knowledge Management Regional Officer based in the Philippines, recently spoke with Twin-Bakhaw project team members—Field Program Coordinator Vivien Facunla and the Assistant Field Project Officers Ana Liza Gobrin and Nemelito Meron—to learn more about how they integrated SRHR, gender, capacity building, and environmental protection through the Twin-Bakhaw project.