OVERVIEW
Over 1.6 billion peoples' livelihoods depend on forests. These ecosystems are not only critical for human health, they are sacred to many Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Securing the rights to their territories, livelihoods, and cultural identities is key to achieving the mitigation and adaptation actions associated with forest conservation.
The people who live in the places we work are critical leaders in conservation. Hence WWF's collaborative approach to conservation is grounded in the benefits nature provides to people and the role of communities as stewards of their own land and waters.
At WWF we stand side by side with the people who call the world’s most incredible natural places home. We work, together, to ensure that nature can continue to provide for us all.
OUR WORK
- Inclusive conservation: Some estimates suggest Indigenous Peoples manage or hold tenure rights over a quarter of the world’s land outside Antarctica, including about 40% of all terrestrial protected areas and ecologically intact landscapes on Earth. A top priority for WWF is inclusive conservation, supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities to protect their lands and biodiversity from destructive activities like logging, mining, industrial agriculture and infrastructure.
WWF also has an Environmental & Social Safeguards Framework (ESSF), which provides an institutional mechanism to manage the environmental and social risks, together with the impacts of WWF’s work, helping deliver better conservation outcomes, and contributing to the well-being of local communities in the places where WWF operates. - Tackling environmental corruption: Crimes like illegal logging pose serious threats to nature and people, damaging the environment and undermining local communities and economies. That’s why we’re working in partnership with partners like TRAFFIC to find new ways of tackling corruption and improving forest governance in the places where it matters most. WWF recently partnered with INTERPOL and the German Federal Environment Ministry to tackle transboundary international environmental crime.