Prioritizing Both People and Planet: How the NGO Health in Harmony Has Changed the Way Global Health and Climate Conservation Are Done

BY TOMEKA FRIESON

What if I told you that there was an organization that not only cared for the planet but also for the people who call it home? More than just a conservation institution that focuses on regenerating Earth’s rainforests or maintaining species diversity, this organization buys back chainsaws, encourages local entrepreneurship, and provides healthcare for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. This organization is called Health in Harmony, and its holistic approach to the well-being of humans, animals, and the environment is one worth sharing.

To best understand Health in Harmony, it is first important to understand their field of practice – planetary health. Planetary health is neither exactly global health, climate activism, or wildlife conservation. Rather, it is a mix of all of the above. According to a seminal article published by the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission, “the concept of planetary health is based on the understanding that human health and human civilization depend on flourishing natural systems and the wise stewardship of those natural systems. However, natural systems are being degraded to an extent unprecedented in human history.”¹ Similar to the World Health Organization’s “One Health” approach, planetary health as a field acknowledges that everything on Earth – humans, animals, and the environment – is interdependent. The health of one of these aspects affects the others, and solutions to the climate crisis, human health, and environmental degradation should necessarily consider how improving the health of one improves the health of all. This is the concept that Dr. Kinari Webb had in mind when Health in Harmony (HIH) was first founded.

HIH was founded in 2005 after a transformative trip that then-conservation biologist

Kinari Webb took to Borneo, Indonesia, at 21 years old to study orangutans. At that time, healthcare was very difficult to access and afford in these rainforest communities. Logging, or the act of cutting down trees to use their wood, was one of the only—and, in some cases, the only—profitable enterprise that rainforest communities could access to make money, even with its devastating impact on climate health and biodiversity. Thus, the high costs of healthcare led community members to illegally log as a means to afford healthcare, which in turn created an environment that was worse for the health of both humans and the orangutans she studied. In conversation with local community leaders and the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities of Borneo, Kinari realized that removing barriers to accessible healthcare could also directly mitigate the need for logging and the corresponding deforestation and species loss it caused.² To most effectively protect the rainforest and the people and animals within it, Kinari decided to pivot away from conservation biology and pursue a medical education at the Yale School of Medicine, allowing her to return to the rainforest to more effectively support the health of the people and ecosystems she encountered while there. Thus, the mission of HIH was born: to “reverse rainforest deforestation for planetary health.”³

Considering Kinari’s extensive familiarity with Indonesian Borneo from previous trips to the region, it naturally became the starting point for HIH’s work. However, rather than entering Indonesia paternalistically with solutions already in mind, or in a way that failed to acknowledge the history of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities fighting to protect their lands, HIH grounded its approach to this community in partnership, with a readiness to learn and an eagerness to radically listen—an act that became part of HIH’s foundation.

“Radical listening” is a concept originating from Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities and uplifted by HIH to inform the implementation of their work. In essence, the HIH team holds meetings with local community members to better understand what these community members would need as a “thank you” from global citizens for protecting and preserving Earth’s climate-critical and life-giving rainforest ecosystems.⁴ Part and parcel of the radical listening approach is the acknowledgement that rainforest communities are the most affected by environmental degradation and yet contribute the least to its causes. What is unique and, frankly, radical about the radical listening approach is not just what it is, but how it is done and subsequently utilized. Radical listening flips the colonial way of engaging in conservation work on its head; rather than telling communities what needs to be done to preserve Earth’s precious resources, it acknowledges that Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities already have the wisdom and solutions necessary to identify how certain climate concerns should be addressed. Thus, the radical listening approach is guided by rainforest community voices, committing to trust, support, and implement their identified solutions.⁵ Utilizing findings from these radical listening conversations, HIH team members put their money where their mouths are, investing directly in both people and their identified solutions in Borneo. In fact, HIH’s pilot site in Borneo provides a powerful example of the impact that the radical listening approach can have.

The rainforests of Indonesia are rich with species diversity, containing 10% of all existing animal species and 11% of all plant species.⁶ Moreover, these rainforests, and particularly their peatlands, store nearly 57 billion tons of carbon—enough to cover roughly two years of global fossil fuel emissions.⁷ However, these same rainforests are being logged at startling rates, with nearly 40% of the rainforest lost over the past 50 years.⁶ Thus, in 2007, Kinari founded the local organization Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI) to work alongside HIH to radically listen to community needs and get at the root of massive rainforest loss at Borneo’s Gunung Palung National Park (GPNP). What these organizations heard was the need for increased access to healthcare, which would reduce the need to log to afford care, combined with the need for a just transition away from logging into better paying, safer, and more forest-friendly occupations. In response, HIH established a community medical center, where individuals could use non-cash items, such as tree seedlings that could be planted for reforestation, as payment for medical care, allowing community members to quite literally improve Earth’s health while improving their own.⁶ In response to increases in oil palm production on the eastern side of GPNP, HIH and ASRI established monthly mobile health clinics that allowed them to reach more remote communities while still providing high-quality healthcare that diverted logging needs.⁶ 

HIH and ASRI did not stop there in employing their radical listening approach. Guided by local communities’ design wisdom, they began a Chainsaw Buyback Program, whereby they would pay potential loggers to buy back the chainsaws they would have used for logging. In return, they provided them with startup funding to develop new, sustainable businesses in farming.⁶ For women whose husbands may have passed away, HIH and ASRI developed the Goats for Widows program, whereby women would be provided with goats to raise, breed, and eventually sell as sources of income.⁶ Further, in recognition of community members’ desire to establish some form of accountability, whereby instances of logging and illegal hunting could be monitored and quickly addressed, HIH and ASRI assisted the communities in establishing a Forest Guardians program, training and paying community members to serve as “Guardians of the Trees,” protecting their forests and their communities.^2,6 In doing all of this, HIH also partnered with ASRI to establish ASRI Kids, through which they inspired the next generation of climate protectors and Forest Guardians.⁸

The results of these efforts have been astounding. Since establishing the site in 2007, HIH and ASRI have regrown over 21,000 hectares of secondary forest; engaged with over 28,000 patients through 100,000 visits to local medical clinics; supported over 6,000 community members in establishing alternative livelihoods; reduced the number of logging households by over 90%; decreased infant mortality rates by over 67%; and decreased rainforest loss in GPNP by 70%, which averted the loss of $65 million in aboveground carbon emissions.^6,9 More than this, a camera-trap study in 2024 found that 47 different wildlife species, nearly 40% of whom were on the threatened species list, utilized corridors that were reforested by community members.^6,10 Combined with the fact that HIH’s model has been cited as an effective way to reduce zoonotic spillover, the impact of this planetary health non-governmental organization (NGO) is at once unique, radical, and increasingly innovative.¹¹

Once it was proven that a planetary health approach could be effective in addressing human, animal, and environmental health, HIH expanded to other sites around the world, partnering and scaling for increased impact. In Madagascar, HIH partnered with Madagascar’s Ministries of the Environment and Health to address community-identified challenges, such as extreme hunger, the need for sustainable farming techniques, and high-cost healthcare.¹² Through radical listening and partnership, HIH has been able to support over 5,000 people in alternative livelihoods; conduct over 20,000 patient visits; and reforest over 62 hectares of Madagascar’s Manombo Forest since 2019.¹² In Brazil, HIH founded affiliate partner NGO SAMA-HIH to enact community-designed solutions, such as increased access to affordable healthcare, particularly through telemedicine; increased support for traditional livelihoods that allow rainforest communities to transfer traditional knowledge across generations; and increased value placed on traditional ways of practicing medicine.¹³ These approaches have kept the Forest Guardians on their lands and have ensured that the forests are not left vulnerable to malicious land-grabbers. Since 2020, these activities have led to over 5,000 vaccinations administered, over 4,000 patient visits, and contributed to nearly 2.5 million hectares of rainforest protected within the Xingu River Basin of Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest.¹³ 

In addition to these accomplishments, HIH has exponentially expanded its local and global partnerships. The NGO employs teams of staff and community members throughout Indonesia, Madagascar, and Brazil and is rapidly establishing innovative and groundbreaking partnerships with global organizations such as Doctors without Borders, the Indigenous-led Pawanka Fund, the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Indonesia’s Ministries of Health and Forestry, If Not Us Then Who, Savimbo, WildMon, and Earth Finance to further carry out its vital work at scale.^14,15 As HIH continues to grow, the organization’s approach to each new site will remain global yet specific and unique, identifying local partners, utilizing a radical listening approach to understand and address specific community needs, and providing rapid bridge funding to communities to enact their identified solutions.

One particularly exciting aspect of HIH’s ongoing work is that while the organization started at one site and grew to become globally recognized, HIH is always looking for opportunities to engage more youth and young professionals from around the world in its work. Accordingly, HIH established a young professionals Associate Board in 2022, comprised of volunteers aged 12 to 35 who serve as advocates for and provide fresh insights into the work of HIH.¹⁶ As an Associate Board Member myself, I have been able to work with young leaders from across the globe to support HIH’s mission of reversing tropical rainforest deforestation and putting an end to the nature and climate crisis. As the organization continues to grow, HIH welcomes more youth and young professionals to get involved and become part of future generations of the Associate Board working to further this critical mission.

HIH has proven to be a groundbreaking organization that has changed the way global health and climate conservation are done. Its planetary health approach emphasizes interdependence, and its use of radical listening and prioritization of local health and environmental partners solidifies not only that the organization is community-engaged, but community-led. As HIH continues to scale, its founding principles and guiding values remain the same: to center the voices of Indigenous communities and local Forest Guardians, and to ensure that the health of humans, ecosystems, and the Earth remain in harmony.

To learn more about Health in Harmony, make a donation, or get involved, please visit http://www.healthinharmony.org.

Tomeka Frieson is a Yale College graduate (Berkeley College ’21).

——————————

References

1. Whitmee, S. et al. Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: Report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet 386, 1973–2028 (2015).
2. Webb, K. Guardians of the Trees: A Journey of Hope Through Healing the Planet. (Flatiron Books, 2021).
3. Health in Harmony. About – Mission. Health in Harmony https://www.healthinharmony.org/about/#Mission.
4. Chouliaraki Milner, D. Listening as a Radical Act. Atmos https://atmos.earth/health-in-harmony-planetary-health-radical-listening-juma-xipaia-kinari-webb/ (2022).
5. Health in Harmony. Radical Listening. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=999242448895930&set=pcb.999242695562572 (2025).
6. Health in Harmony. Indonesia. Health in Harmony https://www.healthinharmony.org/indonesia.
7. Pearce, F. Will UN Carbon Market Work?: Indonesia Will Provide First Test. Yale Environment 360 https://e360.yale.edu/features/indonesia-carbon-credits-bioeconomy (2024).
8. Health in Harmony. ASRI Program Spotlight: ASRI Kids. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWVuXxe69wI (2013).
9. Jones, I. J. et al. Improving rural health care reduces illegal logging and conserves carbon in a tropical forest. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, 28515–28524 (2020).
10. Buckley, C. How Rebuilding Forests Helped Pangolins, Orangutans and People. The New York Times (2024).
11. Vora, N. M. et al. Want to prevent pandemics? Stop spillovers. Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01312-y (2022).
12. Health in Harmony. Madagascar. Health in Harmony https://www.healthinharmony.org/madagascar.
13. Health in Harmony. Brazil. Health in Harmony https://www.healthinharmony.org/brazil.
14. Health in Harmony. Team. Health in Harmony https://www.healthinharmony.org/team.
15. Health in Harmony. About – Partners. Health in Harmony https://www.healthinharmony.org/about/#Partners.
16. Health in Harmony. Health In Harmony Associate Board: Onboarding and Purpose. (2024).