Marco Johannes Haenssgen

Signatories of global conservation treaties have pledged to support Indigenous peoples' rights and roles in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystems. Movements embracing biocultural concepts (e.g. Indigenous ecological knowledge, cultural ecosystem services) and governance approaches (e.g. sacred natural sites, biosphere reserves) have provided important impulses, but existing frameworks offer limited insight into the complex interplay between Indigenous communities, ecosystems, and conservation policy. A complementary approach that centres the analysis on ‘doing’ biocultural heritage, the processes that constitute and unsettle it, and the broader context to which it connects can offer new pathways for informing conservation policy. This article introduces such an approach through the concept of everyday environmental heritage (EEH). We define EEH as an inherently intangible and unstable process of producing and transmitting culture through artefacts, spaces and practices in a way that creates direct and indirect links to people's local ecosystems. Its main analytical value derives from (1) engaging with the communal processes and external contextual factors that shape contemporary heritage expressions; (2) interrogating their intrinsic value and instrumental functions; and (3) exploring the behavioural, social, and political systems to which they connect. We illustrate a subset of the possibilities of the EEH concept in an exploratory case study of forest management by Indigenous communities in northern Thailand. Data were collected using participatory ethnographic methods in two Pgaz K'Nyau (Karen) and two Hmong villages in Chiang Mai province from 03/2022 to 05/2024, which involved 75 Indigenous participants and eight community consultations. Through inductive thematic analysis, we highlight three key manifestations of EEH: intrinsically valued practices without direct links to external conservation stakeholders, instrumental practices for contesting state conservation policies and land‐use restrictions, and emerging practices with the potential to stabilise into one of the first two types. Local social and institutional networks were key to support EEH practices. We discuss how varied expressions of EEH, their political antecedents, and their systemic consequents can help identify and promote sustainable and Indigenous‐led conservation approaches. We conclude that future work should systematically explore conservation effect mechanisms and bottom‐up policy design process models centred on the concept of EEH. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Amidst interconnected environmental and human wellbeing challenges, multilateral agreements and global movements have begun acknowledging the longstanding roles of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems and natural resources. One potential tool and emerging frontier for supporting this role more actively and inclusively lies in everyday environmental heritage (EEH). Here, we develop guidance for operationalising this concept through systematic, culturally appropriate assessments that identify and prioritise EEH manifestations on the community level. We conceptualise EEH as social assemblage and formulate a six-step participatory assessment methodology that involves the systematic contextualisation and identification, specification, and selection of EEH manifestations. We illustrate our approach through a case study in northern Thailand, where many IPLCs have experienced prolonged tensions with modernist rural development agendas and top-down state conservation policies for tropical forest protection. Building upon participatory ethnographic research involving 75 Indigenous participants in four Hmong and Pgaz K’Nyau communities in Chiang Mai Province (implemented between 03/2022 and 05/2024), we illustrate the uses of community-drawn maps, social structure maps, annual calendars, heritage record forms, and EEH evaluation forms for prioritising heritage practices that have the potential to support conservation. We contend that the EEH Assessment Methodology can actively support EEH with a view towards local policy challenges while remaining grounded in and respectful towards the lived realities and internal heterogeneities of communities. Our work underlines the potential of EEH as a tool for promoting inclusive and sustainable locally-led conservation and development.

Background: Food insecurity and micronutrient deficiency remain pressing global development challenges, particularly for women and children in poor and remote communities in low- and middle-income countries. Global interest has grown in locally produced ready-to-eat nutritive foods to help combat different forms of malnutrition. The aim of this paper was to understand the acceptability of a novel and locally produced nutritive food bar for rural consumers at risk of malnutrition in Lao PDR. Methods: This multidisciplinary cross-sectional acceptability study assessed the organoleptic qualities of five different nutritive food bar formulations; willingness to use ready-to-use foods; and nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours related to ready-to-use foods. The study, implemented in June 2023, used structured questionnaires administered by trained interviewers to elicit data from 62 subject pairs of children and their caregivers from four rural communities in Vientiane Province. The data were analysed using non-inferential descriptive statistical analysis (univariate and bivariate analysis). Results: All five bar formulations received organoleptic ratings from 3.7 to 4.1 (adults) and 3.7 to 4.0 (children) on a 1-to-5 scale (5 being ”very good”). 93.6% caregivers would buy their preferred bar in a shop and 91.9% would have their child buy it at school. Participants’ average willingness-to-pay for their preferred bar was LAK 2580.64 (US$ 0.14) per bar, which was less than the production cost (LAK 4300). 95.2% of caregivers had knowledge on micronutrients and 75.8% on food fortification. At least weekly consumption of ready-to-use foods in participants’ households was 93.5% for salty snacks, 95.2% for sweets, and 98.4% for drinks. Willingness-to-pay appeared to be linked to lower age, higher household-level ready-to-use food spending, social and mass media use for nutrition information, and previous experiences with nutritive food bars for children. Conclusions: We conclude that a locally produced nutritive food bar has potential to improve nutrition intake among vulnerable populations at risk of malnutrition, such as women in childbearing age or school-aged children. Since rural development may raise demand for convenient ready-to-use foods, a nutritive food bar could provide a healthier alternative for households with high existing consumption of salty snacks and sweets, aided by market-based instruments and social/mass media outreach.

In November 2024, the Thai government approved two Royal Decrees for ecosystem conservation that would severely threaten the livelihoods, living prospects, and continued residence of Indigenous communities in protected areas. Protests with 10,000 participants prompted a review of the decrees in May 2025. This research report investigates the psychological and social implications of the announcement of the Royal Decrees and argues that it undermined community social capital and intrinsic engagement with everyday environmental heritage. We drew on qualitative and survey data collected from 09/2024 to 05/2025 in two Pga K’Nyau and two Hmong communities in the northern Thai highlands, comprising community consultations with 73 participants, 101 semi-structured interviews, and two survey rounds, for a total of 384 observations. We used qualitative thematic analysis and descriptive statistics to explore how community members experienced, interpreted, and responded to the announcement of the decrees. We found that Indigenous villagers experienced anxiety and unease, and that the decrees undermined community efforts to conserve and engage with local ecosystems. The continued uncertainty surrounding communities’ future sparked a strong activist sentiment to resist the decrees. Disruptions to community social capital and everyday environmental heritage also had plausible, potentially significant ecological downstream effects. We therefore call for an urgent correction to the conservation initiative to embrace inclusive, bottom-up natural resource governance.

Community engagement activities have rapidly gained recognition in global health policy, but comprehensive evaluations remain scarce. This article exemplifies the use of explicit evaluation criteria within a mixed-method and theory-guided evaluation, applied to village-based community engagement activities of a nationwide health Initiative in Lao PDR. The evaluation case study was one element in a multi-pronged evaluation approach and considered the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, impact, relevance, coherence, sustainability, and equity. We gathered qualitative and quantitative data before and at least three months after the village-based activities, focusing on 14 case study communities across four provinces who participated in the Initiative. 3,161 survey observations, 50 semi-structured interviews, and 50 key informant interviews were collected. The Initiative was highly relevant and integrated seamlessly and synergistically into healthcare operations, creating important synergies through its relational and positive approach. Supported by enthusiastic stakeholder support, the Initiative aligned with its intentions to promote health equity while no major negative unintended side-effects materialized. This case study demonstrates the value of rapid feedback of and adaptation to emerging evaluation insights, the appreciation of unintended side-effects of interventions, and the theoretical grounding of evaluation approaches with a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria.

Maternal health has made important gains globally over the past decades, but it remains a pressing health priority that is facing diminishing returns from conventional policy instruments. Community engagement approaches hold great promise through their focus on social and contextual determinants of maternal health. This study explores the short-term effects of a relational community engagement intervention which foregrounded trust and relationships between communities and local healthcare providers as important social determinants: the Community Network Engagement for Essential Healthcare and COVID-19 Responses Through Trust (CONNECT) Initiative in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). We studied the short-term effects of the CONNECT Initiative on health-centre-provided maternal healthcare attitudes, practices, and experiences. An evaluative study using a quasi-experimental study without control design was implemented from 10/2022 to 12/2023 among 14 diverse case study communities in four provinces across Lao PDR. Data collection involved two rounds of complete census surveys before and at least three months after village-based CONNECT activities (3,161 survey observations), 50 semi-structured interviews with villagers, and 50 contextualizing key informant interviews. Among others, attitudes among women to recommend health centres for ante-natal care and delivery were 7.3 and 14.6 percentage points higher at endline (p < 0.01), and practices of giving birth at their local health centre were 14.3 percentage points higher at endline (p = 0.095). No statistically significant effect for maternal healthcare experiences was detected. Compared to the changes across survey periods, changes were similarly pronounced at endline among women who were exposed to CONNECT relative to unexposed villagers. We also observed a proportionate counter-reaction of reduced indicators of attitudes and practices involving hospital-provided maternal healthcare services. CONNECT addressed communities’ trust and relationships towards local healthcare providers. The Initiative responded effectively to social determinants of maternal health in Lao PDR, with the positive side-effect of strengthening the gatekeeping functions of primary care facilities in the broader health system. This provides strong support for further operational and evaluation research into the opportunities of relational community engagement activities to complement supply-sided interventions in the attainment of global maternal health goals and low- and middle-income country health services provision more broadly.

Community engagement has been recognized as a key tool for supporting national health agendas, and experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic can offer important lessons for tackling future global health challenges such as antimicrobial resistance. This paper provides much-needed evaluation knowledge on relational community engagement initiatives and their impact on COVID-19-related attitudes and practices. A two-round mixed-method evaluative study to examine outcome indicators related to COVID-19-prevention and health-seeking behavior was implemented from October 2022 to December 2023 among 14 diverse case study communities in four Lao provinces. Data involved 50 semi-structured interviews with villagers, 50 key informant interviews, and two rounds of complete census surveys (3,161 survey observations incl. matched panel data from 618 individuals) to discern outcomes among villagers with different levels of activity participation in a difference-in-difference analysis. Relative to non-participating villagers, villagers participating in the activities had higher COVID-19 vaccine uptake (+0.13 doses), higher public healthcare utilization for presentations consistent with COVID-19 (e.g. fever and neurological and/or respiratory symptoms; +69.4% points), and less antibiotic use per illness episode (-0.2 antibiotic use episodes). However, the activity raised worries to disclose a COVID-19-positive status and was often interpreted as a health education campaign. Relational community engagement offers a respectful way of addressing persistent healthcare challenges and supporting vulnerable populations - and thus holds key for ongoing global health priorities such as emerging infectious disease responses and antimicrobial resistance. We recommend that community engagement initiatives become a standard component of national health policy portfolios beyond the scope of COVID-19.