Tell me a little about the history of PHE in Madagascar—when and why did it start?
Starting as early as 1980, Madagascar’s Integrated Conservation and Development Project began linking natural resource management with sustainable development. Within five years it included health and family planning components and thus began population, health, and environment (PHE) in Madagascar.
While this integrated approach has evolved over time, it was grounded in the National Environment Action Plan and the understanding that we cannot fully protect the planet without protecting our people. There is a lot to be gained by integrating the environmental and health communities. Our many conservation groups, for example, are very well equipped to work in ecologically rich areas, but the people living in these remote areas have huge unmet health needs. Health organizations, on the other hand, have unique capacities to address health needs but may not have the reach or strong relationships to extend services into these communities.
A true PHE partnership model is actually more effective than just having one organization implement the different components. The real value is in having multidisciplinary teams with strong skills in their respective sector join for site activities. The collaboration is mutually beneficial.
How did the PHE Madagascar Network start and what role does it play?
The PHE Madagascar Network—led by Blue Ventures—built on decades of population, health, and environment projects across the country. It emerged during a national workshop with diverse stakeholders and donors who together identified an opportunity to better share experiences across the country.
The network’s objective is simply to connect and support partnership between health and conservation organizations. We offer a learning platform that supports partners to share their experiences, tools, and technical resources. The exchange also helps government authorities track progress in biodiversity sites.
Through the network, partners meet each other and learn what each other are doing and discover ways to work together. We host listservs for national and regional development groups and a quarterly newsletter. We offer 2–3 national coordination meetings a year to bring staff together, most recently done remotely. We also offer 1–2 network meetings for each region, including an annual learning exchange visit to see how the approach is being implemented and engage with field staff and the community.
Beyond connecting organizations, we create and field-test educational materials that we share with all partners and sometimes even support individual partners. We have been working with the relevant ministries on a national PHE framework that would support adoption of the approach for the country.