Since 2017, Health In Harmony, along with Indonesian partner Alam Sehat Lestari, has worked with local community members to action the Chainsaw Buyback program. This innovative program supports those wishing to give up illegal logging in seeking alternative livelihoods that do not damage the forest.  Now, the program is developing in exciting new ways.

Rainforests are the most biodiverse terrestrial biome on our planet. The level of biodiversity – the number of different kinds of life you'll find – varies from place to place. Islands are known for their biodiversity, because the isolation of islands allows organisms to evolve in their own, unique directions – and nowhere on Earth has more one-of-a-kind species than Madagascar.

Local communities in Madagascar, the fourth most climate-vulnerable country in the world, found that cyclones were damaging tree nurseries, particularly in 2023, when three cyclones hit the area. Communities voiced a need to build cyclone-resilient nurseries and worked with HIH to implement these designs: learn how a cyclone-proof nursery is built, the impacts of climate resilience, and this initiative’s progress so far.

Traditional nursery bags are made of plastics that cannot be recycled and harm the environment as well as human health. To address this issue, Health In Harmony worked with communities in an initiative to reduce waste as well as support local livelihoods in a sustainable way.

Located in São Félix do Xingu, Pará, Brazil, the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory comprises ~750k hectares of primary rainforest, sequestering over 80 million tonnes of carbon. Apyterewa has the highest deforestation rate among Indigenous territories in the Amazon, but in just a few months, community-led solutions here have begun to heal the forest, restore biodiversity, and strengthen the Parakanã’s rightful stewardship of their land.

2025. Another vital year for Earth's climate. More audacious goals. Find out more about what Health In Harmony has worked on in 2024 and aims for this year.

In 2024, in Brazil, Indonesia, and Madagascar, rainforest community members have designed innovative and sustainable pathways to protect the ecosystems they call home. Watch a video now to hear accounts of planetary health solutions from community members first-hand. 

In August 2024, Health In Harmony was honored to attend Juma Institute’s first Meeting of Indigenous Xipai Women and Riverine at the Kaarimã village in the Xipaya Territory. This joyful event’s focus was to unite and strengthen women's ancestral knowledge, promote cultural practices, and encourage the exchange of knowledge between communities of the Xipaya Indigenous territory and its partners. 

Meeting the expressed healthcare needs of women and girls is not only critical for their well-being but also for fostering sustainable livelihoods, empowering decision-making, and strengthening community resilience to the cascading effects of climate change. In Madagascar, cervical cancer prevention is a pressing health concern; find out more about HIH’s cervical cancer initiatives.

During this holiday season, we are honored to share words from Health In Harmony’s Laura Tesch, offering a Native American perspective on reclaiming Thanksgiving. Read more now.

It’s time to do things differently.

We must acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples have been the stewards of biodiversity since time immemorial. Their tested ways of knowing and science are not only integral to conserving nature but also to restoring ecosystems and addressing the climate and biodiversity crises. 

In Matan in Indonesian Borneo, Dr Norma Sari, a Health In Harmony affiliated dentist, has been treating children of five to seven years old. Often, she is finding that their baby teeth have rotted, leaving them with no teeth until adult teeth develop. See how HIH is approaching child health care in Indonesia.

Listen to a message from Laetania Belai Djandam, an Indigenous conservationist from Borneo and HIH Board Member, about Planetary Health.

Education is critical when it comes to healthcare. The Health Guardian program in Madagascar was devised to train and employ community-selected villagers, usually women, to support healthcare services like vaccinations, malaria, and malnutrition treatments, as well as household basic health screenings.

Healthy communities can heal the planet, and costly healthcare forces Indigenous Peoples and local communities to turn to income streams such as illegal logging in order to access the life saving medicine that should be a human right. For this reason, making healthcare more accessible to rainforest communities has been a priority for Health in Harmony since its inception.

Spreading via water contact and affecting up to half of the youth population in some villages in Madagascar, schistosomiasis is this disease is second only to malaria as the most dangerous parasitic disease. HIH aims to identify areas inhabited by parasite-carrying snails in order to reduce human contact and transmission.

Happy International Women’s Day – a day to not only celebrate and uplift women everywhere. But we can’t stop at March 8. 

Meet forest guardian Lúcia Xipaya. Born in Joa, near the town of Altamira in the Xingu basin in the Amazon, Lúcia’s belief and work centers around protecting Indigenous traditions to pass down to future generations, as well as protecting the forest that makes these traditions possible.