Marine Protected Area Success in Combined Population, Health, and Environment Projects

There are clearly relationships between human population size and health and the environment.  Over the past decade several international NGOs and bilateral aid organizations have implemented combined population, health and environment (PHE) projects under the assumption that such integration would result in synergies producing added value—impacts in each sector greater than if implemented separately.  Evaluations of these projects have been inconsistent due to varying methodologies, which could have influenced results.  This paper examines impacts of an integrated PHE project (involving MPAs) in the Philippines based on a comparative analysis of a random sample of 34 PHE and 18 non-PHE project communities conducted 3 years after project end.  Results indicate little to no added value on a community-wide basis as a consequence of limited individual participation—project participants evidenced desired changes, but they were too few in number to have impacts at the community level.  This indicated a need for research identifying factors influencing project participation.  The findings indicate that impacts on project participation at the individual level are influenced by several variables such as marital status, years of education, number of children and implementing NGO activities.  Finally, percent participation at the community level, a factor which influences diffusion of intended project impacts throughout the community, is found to be strongly related to population size and density, religion and degree of project integration.