Final Results of the Alam Sehat Lestari Five Year Impact Survey

Fri, 08/23/2013 - 05:54

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Date

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 12:00

Summary

"Five years ago there were more than 100 people in my village doing illegal logging, now there are less than 10." Pak Bastarin, Village Headman

The purpose of this survey was to obtain information on the impact of the Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI) healthcare and conservation programmes over its first five years. ASRI is an Indonesian non-governmental organisation (NGO) that involves exchanging healthcare for work by villages to prevent logging in order to protect the biodiversity of the Gunung Palung National Park on the island of Borneo. It follows a theory that forest health and human health are inter-linked. This theory is the basis for providing public health education and healthcare in exchange for environmental care and protection of forest resources. Its programmes include livelihoods education in organic farming techniques to replace logging income and public health outreach including HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, maternal care, water/sanitation/hygiene, nutrition and dental hygiene, and forest conservation education. It runs a healthcare clinic that includes dentistry. ASRI distributes mosquito nets and has a TB control programme (directly observed treatment, short-course - DOTS). The NGO runs a training programme for both Indonesian and international physicians, midwives, and healthcare workers and aims to build a training facility.

A part of its communication work on forest health includes the Forest Guardians, a programme for monitoring logging in these communities. Forest Guardians conduct community outreach, bringing loggers around to seeking alternative livelihoods. (See Related Summaries below.)

Through random sampling, a questionnaire was used - nurses read and recorded answers - to obtain data to compare to the previous baseline survey.

From 2007-2012, the clinic and mobile clinic have seen over 15,000 patients with over 30,000 patient visits. Of the surveyed population, 65% had heard about ASRI; 80% of those who knew of ASRI knew of the non-cash payment option (ASRI trades healthcare for tree seedlings and reforestation work as well as organic garden work in the clinic garden); and 16.6% had been a patient at the clinic.

Selected health indicators include the following:

Infant mortality: 18% reduction
Child immunisations: completed immunisations increased 11%; any immunisations increased 25%
Diarrhoea in last 3 months: 49% reduction
HIV awareness: 27% increase
Mosquito net use: 12% increase
Access to toilet: 22% increase
Boil drinking water: 25% increase
Defecate in river: 37% decrease

A part of the incentive for villages to control logging in their segments of the national park is a clinic discount provided for all villagers from non-logging villages - park officials monitor logging through fly-overs, but villages are tasked with preventing logging. Only 22% of respondents were aware of the clinic discount, but 61% of those had discussed the discount with others. "When told about the discount, over 90% of people believed their family members would stop logging for the discount; over 80% believed their community would stop logging. Almost all the respondents who already knew about the discount and had discussed it with others said it had already decreased logging (98%)"

Selected conservation indicators include:

A two-thirds increase in non-logging villages - from six to ten, out of 30 total villages served
Loggers who met with Forest Guardians: more than 50% stopped logging, 25% considered stopping
Loggers who attended an ASRI meeting: more than 50% stopped, more than 40% considered stopping
Percentage of active loggers decreased from 9% to 3%
9% of respondents considered logging acceptable, and less than 1.3% thought it unavoidable

According to Village Headman Pat Bastarin, "[t]he effect I have seen of ASRI, is that people are working doing organic farming. It used to be that people couldn't start farming because they didn’t have the start up money to buy fertilizer, but now they can just make the fertilizer themselves."

This video documents the efforts of the ASRI Clinic to protect Gunung Palung National Park, in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.