Despite progress over the years, Ethiopia’s Guraghe zone, located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region, faces many development challenges. As senior monitoring and evaluation officer in the Guraghe People’s Self-help Development Organization (GPSDO), I have been working in this region for more than five years trying to reduce poverty and improve socio-economic development. The organization as a whole has been here for more than 50.

Since the integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) approach is relatively new in international development, donors, partners, and implementers want to know how it’s improving people’s lives. In the PHE community, we believe that combining efforts to address natural resource management, reproductive health, and livelihoods is making a difference in places where rapid population growth combines with poverty and environment degradation. But to know for sure and be able to convince others, we need to have data to support those beliefs.

It is well known that public health issues that affect the world’s most vulnerable populations – food insecurity, maternal and child health, water- and sanitation-related disease, and resource scarcity – are inextricably linked. Where these linkages are strongest, experience on the ground has shown that community-based integrated approaches to development provide more effective and sustainable solutions over vertical, sector-based programs. But so far, there are very few comprehensive evaluations providing strong quantitative evidence of this advantage.

The original version of this article, by Vik Mohan, appeared on Blue Ventures’ blog.

I recently spent a hectic and intense couple of weeks in the village of Andavadoaka, where Blue Ventures’ community health project is based, during my annual visit to Madagascar. Although I founded our Safidy (meaning “choice”) health program several years ago, each return visit brings new and inspiring stories and lessons from our team on the ground.

Across India, where I live and work, I can clearly see the connection between land rights and peace and security.

With respect to personal safety and security: 12 percent of all murders here are related to conflicts over land.

On a provincial level: few weeks go by without newspapers here reporting on violence between communities who are battling over land.

The original version of this article appeared in The Nature Conservancy’s October issue of their Science Chronicles newsletter.

It seems like everywhere you turn recently, you hear how the planet’s population is headed to 10 billion. And obvious questions follow: How can we balance far more people with the natural resources needed for their survival? How will we get more food? How will we get more energy?

Earlier this month, there was a flurry of stories about brutal mass killings in clashes between the Pokomo and Orma communities over water and land in southeast Kenya’s Tana River County. The Kenyan media reported that about 30 people, including eight security personnel, had been killed and scores wounded, and reports on the death toll since last month are more than 100.

It’s not often that a change in accounting rules could reduce the probability of war. But that’s exactly what happened at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month.