BY GIRMACHEW GASHAW
The population, health and environment approach acknowledges that people do not live their lives in a single sector. Instead every day, they make decisions and face challenges across health, livelihood, education and environment.
The consortium is a civil society network or consortium established to contribute for sustainable development via integrating socioeconomic and environmental concerns of the community.
The consortium is concerned on how the community’s livelihood, resilience, contribution to its existence can be strengthened. The Ethiopian Herald recently had a stay with Negash Teklu, founder and Consortium Chief Executive Officer to know the approach it follows and the success gained since the start up of the project.
Why do you prefer to integrate population, health and environment together? What impact will it bring?
Negash: In our planet, continent, country, society, the basic problems of the community are articulated be it social, economic and environmental aspects. So, we are addressing the social, economic and environment component in an integrated way. Above all, cities suffer from limitations of energy.
They have been facing various challenges in relation to power outage. Countries like Ethiopia get power from one source. Due to shortage of power, the government is forced to provide power in shifts. Though the country is providing the power required by the development using such a system, it could not solve the problem once and for all.
Applying a sector based approach; no one can solve the multifaceted problem of a household residing within a community. Looking at it from this perspective, we choose population, environment and health expressing it from socioeconomic and environmental parameters.
In the Ethiopian context, the population dynamics is a crucial issue. Without addressing the population dynamics, ensuring sustainable development is unthinkable. The entire population of Ethiopia before 40 and 50 years was not more than 30 million, but these days the figure exceeds more than three fold.
The population growth from the context of Ethiopia unless harmonized with other developmental issues, will be beyond the carrying capacity of the economy, environment and social existence we have.
So from that perspective we included population, including that economic concerns, health, environment contextualized to the Ethiopian reality.
Would you explain to our readers how sustainable development ensures through enforcing this approach?
Negash: As you understand from our development, any community be it in Ethiopia, South Africa, America, the household interest, demands are from social or economic or environmental. You cannot satisfy a household simply by fulfilling a social component- health.
If you give them, let alone 100 percent even 1000 percent health alone cannot sustain them. Equally, if education and food only won’t make them exist. So, they have a multifaceted demand.
If we really care for them fully, we need to have a multifaceted intervention package. But, as a country, the approach we follow worldwide is a sector based approach.
We have education, health, agriculture which are salient even the UN institutions are similar even the ministries we have. But, in reality a household, the community’s interests are multifaceted. They need to be integrated and comprehensively addressed.
It is from this scientific understanding and approach; it shows how you are committed really to alleviate the problem of a community and household in a true sustainable way.
If we address the multifaceted concerns in an integrated, comprehensive approach your commitment towards the real solution for the community. It is from this perspective we are trying to integrate projects at field, policy level and we can really rapidly solve the problem. You can see our planet.
There are many trials of development, we had the millennium development, and it cannot achieve its goal. The major assessment that was reached is, the reason the millennium development goal failed was, it was not addressing people’s interest in a comprehensive, inclusive and integrated manner.
That is why sustainable development came as a solution bringing 17th goals that compressively address people’s interest. It is from this perspective we are trying to bring an integrated approach as a solution in Ethiopia because it can really improve our developmental approach, it can improve poverty alleviation in a rapid sustainable way.
It is from this principle we are trying how our projects start by alleviating a household problem in an integrated way. The package we organize is not one intervention in one household.
As a package, we bring family planning, gender, health, livelihood, environmental issues even the governance of the family in a way we alleviate their problem in a right way so that by having a sustainable household, we can have a base for sustainable development in our Kebele’s, Woreda’s and Zone’s, Regions and as a country.
How do you describe the effectiveness of PHE integrating approach?
Negash: Since its inception, following this approach is not an easy task, because the mindset and the system we been through are highly cemented on sector based approach.
Thus, to change these, it demands strong evidences that really can convince policy makers, society, intellectuals and professionals.
Consequently, initiating our approach, we started at Woreda level with the limited budget. Asking for an integrated approach was very difficult because, every donor, government institution and UN intuition were more interested in the sector based approach.
And the introduction of the global sustainable development is a big boost to our approach. In that we contributed in the development of the SDG indicators with our global partners.
In summing up, what challenges have you faced in enforcing such an integrated approach and how did you overcome them?
Negash: We initiated this approach in 2008 as a legally established consortium. If you see the trend of our fund generation in all those years, it was incremental, progressive but not in a way we planned in the strategic plan.
If we plan to implement it on a wider level, we are not getting the funds which were expected as per the level of the challenge. Even in the progress we had, because of the minimal budget we had, we cannot fulfill the community’s demand which was not possible to fulfill their interest.
In those 13 years, the harsh environment such as drought, flood have been happening but more than, more than anything, climate change aggravates the project we were working in. conflicts have also happened. In this situation, if you are following a comprehensive integrated approach and it should build the resilience of the society is working comprehensively not only towards livelihood, climate change and flood happen in the area including towards conflict happening in the area, in that level we never got enough support.
The main challenge we faced was the understandings of policy makers, donors, and the society. The resistance was very high. In fact sometimes it frustrates though there is a correct solution if you are not supported in a right way.
Yes we have grown in the last years. In the first five years, we were only implementing our projects in a pilot level. But now we are working in landscape in eco-region level and programme level.
We need to align sustainable development adopted and contextualized to our context. If we apply it we will be an example in solving our problem and at the same time being a showcase to the other world.
The Ethiopian Herald February 6/2021
