What to expect from Health In Harmony in 2025?
2025. Another vital year for Earth's climate. More audacious goals:
We’ll boldly expand our planetary health, Radical Listening model alongside new rainforest communities and partners in Brazil, Panama, Madagascar, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Building on the 2.69 million hectares of tropical rainforest already protected by the rainforest guardians we support, we will fund community-designed solutions to protect an additional 982,000 hectares in 2025. This will bring the total area protected by this model to about 3.7 million hectares, roughly the size of Bhutan. (1 hectare = 2.5 acres)
Behind every hectare of rainforest protected is a community-designed solution driven by social justice. Behind every solution is the radical act of listening.
Rainforest guardians worldwide design holistic solutions to improve their health access, economic conditions, food security, and climate-resilient agriculture. When these solutions are put into action, communities can thrive - and when they thrive, so do their rainforests. And thriving rainforests mean Earth’s biosphere and all of humanity can thrive. You can read the stories of these community members in their own words on our new Health In Harmony website.
Brazil
In Brazil, guided by the Indigenous Peoples who guard their territories, and beside our Global Coalition partners (Pawanka Fund, Woodwell Climate Research Center, If Not Us Then Who, WildMon, Savimbo, and Earth Finance), we will invest in community-designed solutions in five new territories in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025. We will also continue our work with four communities in Panama, partnering with the FSC-Indigenous Foundation.
Indonesia
In Indonesia, we are partnering with Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI) and the Ministry of Health (MoH) to introduce the planetary health, Radical Listening approach inside the national health system in three locations in Papua, and aiming for a total of 10 new locations administered through the MoH in the next four years. Can the Indonesian MoH adopt the ASRI-HIH approach? We think so. But we’ll let our data from these new sites start to tell the story in the coming year.
Madagascar
In Madagascar, our partnership with rainforest communities, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and Ny Tanintsika (NT) will continue in Ikongo District as we begin year two of our five-year joint planetary health programs. Using the Radical Listening approach, 160 rainforest communities have designed holistic solutions for rainforest protection, linking healthcare access, conservation, climate-smart farming, alternative livelihoods for reforestation, education, and water & sanitation (WASH). Today, MSF, NT, and Health In Harmony are working with these communities to turn their solutions into reality, strengthening their guardianship of Madagascar's rainforests. Meet Lianja, HIH’s Ikongo Project Coordinator, a young tour de force, as she introduces progress made so far alongside MSF and NT.
Democratic Republic of Congo
In the Congo basin, we will initiate programs for the first time ever in 2025. We’ve been establishing relations with rainforest communities and skilled partners in North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2023, and early next year we will begin to accompany communities guarding some 90,000 hectares of rainforest in and around the Tayna Gorilla Reserve.
We couldn't do any of this work without you, our champions.
You've been with us for years, boldly funding our experiments, our learning, our successes, our storytelling, and our rapid growth. Most importantly, you've funded our impact on planetary health.
We still have a long way to go. In 2024, we tested many critical aspects of our scaling strategies, and in 2025, we'll continue to refine the community thriving narrative, carbon and biodiversity monitoring, and ethical, community-led verification. We’ll keep testing and pushing our goals further. We must—it’s the decisive decade for Earth’s biosphere, climate, and biodiversity.
While 3.7 million hectares is a big step, it’s just a fraction of the ~500 million hectares of tropical rainforest we aim to help protect in the coming years. But we're not daunted. It wasn’t long ago we told you that we set our sights on rainforest basins outside of Indonesia—and you helped us get there.
Ashley Emerson and Jonathan Jennings
Co-CEOs, Health In Harmony