Reporting on long-term, complex human-environment interactions can be daunting. As the saying goes, “if it bleeds, it leads,” and slow, sometimes-distant changes rarely make headlines. Yet, earlier this year CNN International’s African Voices program took a stab at it, diving into the world of integrated development in a three-part profile of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), a Ugandan NGO that is working to preserve one of Central Africa’s most important biodiversity hotspots while strengthening the health and wellbeing of nearby communities.

World population continues its steady climb, surpassing 7 billion in 2011 and heading to somewhere between 8 and 11 billion by midcentury. But funding to address population-related issues is moving in the opposite direction.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women collectively spend an estimated 40 billion hours a year gathering water, often walking miles to the nearest source, which may not be clean, and braving exhaustion, harassment, and worse along the way. Water availability and quality at health clinics is often not much better, creating a crisis for women, especially pregnant women, throughout the continent. A mutual solution lies in better coordination between efforts to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and maternal health, says the African Medical and Research Foundation’s Lisa Meadowcroft in this week’s podcast.