The term-CBPE for short-refers to the linkages between services that combine aspects of natural resources conservation or similar environmental work and the provision of reproductive health services, including family planning.

The world's forests provide goods and services essential to human and planetary well-being. But forests are disappearing faster today than ever before. Due both to deforestation and human population growth, the current ratio of forests to human beings is less thn half what it was in 1960. Yet we not only need more forests, we need forests more than ever beforeto protect the world's remaining plant and animal life, to prevent flooding, to slow human-induced climate change, and to provide the paper on which education and communication still depend. More efficient consumption of forest products and eventual stabilization of human populationa prospect that appears more promising today as birthrates declinewill be needed to conserve the world's forests in the coming millennium.

There are more than 100 million women and girls alive today who are affected by FGM, the vast majority of them in Africa. Some also live in parts of the Middle East and Asia. With migration, affected women and girls now also live in the United States, Europe and, presumably, other parts of the world.