
Accessible healthcare could help slow climate change, reverse biodiversity losses
Oct. 26 (UPI) -- To protect forests and vulnerable ecosystems, erect healthcare clinics. That's what nonprofit organizers did in Indonesia, where deforestation rates in neighboring Gunung Palung National Park declined dramatically during the first 10 years of the clinic's operation. The affordable healthcare clinic was set up in 2007 by a pair of nonprofits, Alam Sehat Lestari and Health In Harmony. Prior to the arrival of the clinic, the forests of Gunung Palung were shrinking annually as a result of uncontrolled illegal logging. Advertisement To curb the losses, the clinic offered discounted services to villages that enacted community-wide logging reductions and other conservation-minded reforms. Researchers described the clinic's environmental and public health successes in a new paper...