Guest Post Kinari Webb

Tackling the Climate Catastrophe by Partnering with Communities

This contribution is a guest blog from one of our grant recipients: Kinari Webb M.D., founder of Health In Harmony and the author of Guardians of the Trees: A Journey of Hope Through Healing the Planet. Here, she explains how Health In Harmony has taken an innovative approach to evaluating outcomes beyond economic and statistical measures. 

Health in Harmony has been working at the intersection of human and rainforest health for eighteen years. The organisation began by extensively listening to communities in Indonesian Borneo to understand their solutions to deforestation. This initiative highlighted that healthcare provision is not only a human right but also a critical strategy for protecting the forest. Healthy communities were less likely to resort to illegal logging to fund healthcare access.

As we worked with this discovery, we named our methodology Radical Listening. In Indonesia, Madagascar, and Brazil, our rainforest community partners design solutions so that both they and the forest can thrive, and we support the implementation and ongoing success of these plans. They almost always include improved access to healthcare, sustainable alternative livelihoods, and education about methods of protecting and regenerating ecosystems. Indigenous communities also often request aspects of cultural perpetuation.

The challenge, however, is in measuring the impact of these multi-sectoral approaches. Funders generally want proof of outcome to mitigate the potential risk of ‘ineffective’ funding. But when purely financial or statistical success measures are applied in a siloed manner to the complex, intersectional nature of human lives and the environment, much of the true impact and potential is missed. We have therefore developed innovative measurement techniques that are more illuminating barometers of impact.

We started with a series of defining questions. How can we best measure progress under these circumstances? How can we do that without increasing the already heavy burden of reporting on funding recipients? How can it actually be easy?

Effective measurement starts, of course, with how we define the goal. As an example, let’s examine one goal of reversing rainforest loss in a particular area. A common statistic applied is the percentage decrease in the area logged. This is valid as a start, but it only concerns halting further land clearing. It doesn’t look at how well the forest is doing in terms of biodiversity, how much regeneration is happening or how much carbon is being stored in the forest.

Similarly, if an area of forest is being replanted, the typical reforestation statistic is how many trees have been planted, but it means little if they don’t thrive over time. How fast are they growing? Is there healthy species diversity for restoring a complete rainforest ecosystem? Just as importantly, was reforestation the local community’s idea and are they actively engaged? Are they adequately benefiting, are the methods honoring cultural concerns, and is the community enjoying the literal fruits of their labor? 

Getting at these questions in a way that does not place undue burden on grant recipients or communities to monitor is a challenge. One way we have addressed this at Health In Harmony is by partnering with Woodwell Climate Research Center to apply AI-enhanced satellite monitoring technology to measure forest cover and carbon density remotely over time. The goal is for this technology to be freely available for all organizations.  

Similarly, we are testing methods of measuring the health and biodiversity of the creatures living in the forest as they are critical for seed distribution, soil composition, and ecosystem resilience to climate shocks. These methods include camera traps (see our New York Times article on this), eDNA testing, and acoustic monitoring of forest soundscapes in partnership with Arbimon. Our goal is for long term progress in biodiversity to be consistently and easily measured and reported, so we can easily understand what interventions are and aren’t working. 

It’s also critical to know how the communities are doing. Philanthropic organizations typically define well-being by their own societal models, including late-stage capitalist economic indicators (like income per day) or narrow measures such as infant mortality. But, as the recent World Happiness Report highlighted so dramatically, a rise in GDP alone by no means guarantees good lives for citizens. Social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and lack of corruption are equally important. And, we would add, none of these things are possible without a healthy ecosystem as the foundation for individual and collective well-being.  

As the World Happiness Survey attests, well-being lies in a community’s perception of the balance between many factors, which they alone can define. Health In Harmony recognizes that individual rainforest populations have their own ideals for personal and social well-being. Success measures therefore need to correspond to local desires, not externally applied metrics. 

An example: My Indonesian co-founder, Hotlin Ompussunggu, and I did a series of Radical Listening sessions with communities near an area of forest in Central Kalimantan that had been converted to palm oil about 10 years ago. From an outside perspective, these communities seemed to be doing better. They now had wage income instead of relying on subsistence agriculture and had access to healthcare provided by the palm oil company. Infant mortality had declined. But from the community’s perspective, they had now become slaves to the palm oil plantations. They often came home with less money because of all the “benefits” that were subtracted from their wages, and they had no freedom to leave. One man said: “We were never richer than when we were surrounded by wild forest.” These communities wanted to ensure that no more forest was converted to palm oil.  

Health In Harmony believes it is essential for communities to measure their own well-being and the success of any implementations or interventions they have designed. How is it working for them? Do they feel like they are thriving? One woman in Madagascar summed this up to a Health In Harmony team member: “We told you what the solutions were and you implemented them. Now look around you. Look how healthy we are! Our forest is growing back. Our children are now in school. And we are no longer afraid of the hunger season!” 

To tackle the multifaceted challenge of Planetary Health – human lives and the environment thriving in harmony – a systems approach that is easily implemented is critical. What is measured must be the impactful outcomes rather than arbitrary measures that may or may not actually be improving the health and well-being of both communities and ecosystems.