Partnerships

The World Bank constantly seeks to strengthen its biodiversity policies and project performance by involving a broad range of public and private stakeholders in protecting biodiversity resources. To do so, the Bank has strategically partnered with organizations that are rich in conservation experience. Our partners are sometimes better placed to secure participation from in-country stakeholders and local communities that have a significant stake in protecting biodiversity.

The Bank has built and continues to strengthen partnerships with other international NGOs, multilateral environmental agencies, and bilateral donors who also work toward effective and increased biodiversity protection.

Global Tiger Initiative
Save Our Species
Critical Ecosystem Partnerships Fund
The International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime
World Bank/WWF Forest Alliance

Global Tiger Initiative

Launched in June 2008 by World Bank President Robert Zoellick—together with the Smithsonian Institution, Global Environment Facility, and International Tiger Coalition—the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) is an alliance of the 13 Tiger Range Countries—Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam—and their global partners toward the ambitious goal of reversing the decline of wild tigers and doubling their numbers—to at least 7,000—by 2022.

 

Save Our Species

With biodiversity loss increasing at an unprecedented rate, the GEF, World Bank (WB), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have established the Save Our Species (SOS) program to focus fund-raising efforts on a scale necessary to adequately address the biodiversity extinction crisis.

A key strategy for the SOS project is to leverage new funds from private companies that use animals and plants in their logos. With the Bank, GEF, and IUCN providing the seed capital for this initiative, SOS will request support from international corporations, foundations, individuals, and governments. It will provide the private sector and other donors with a mechanism to contribute to efficient, credible, and coordinated species conservation action around the world through competitive grants to civil society partners.

Critical Ecosystem Partnerships Fund

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) aims to provide at least $150 million over five years to support preserving the most biologically significant and threatened areas of the world. The CEPF is a joint initiative of Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the MacArthur Foundation, the Government of Japan, and the World Bank. These leading institutions have each committed $25 million to the Fund, recognizing that strategic alliances and elimination of duplicate efforts are critical to better safeguard threatened ecosystems. Launched in 2000, the CEPF provides financial support, technical expertise, field knowledge and information primarily to non-governmental, community and grassroots organizations in developing countries.

The International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime 

ICCWC is the collaborative effort by five inter-governmental organizations working to bring coordinated support to the national wildlife law enforcement agencies and to the sub-regional and regional networks that, on a daily basis, act in defence of natural resources. The mission of ICCWC is to usher in a new era where perpetrators of serious wildlife crimes will face a formidable and coordinated response, rather than the present situation where the risk of detection and punishment is all too low. In this context, ICCWC will mainly work for, and with, the wildlife law enforcement community, since it is frontline officers who eventually bring criminals engaged in wildlife crime to justice.

World Bank/WWF Forest Alliance 

The World Bank-World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use or World Bank/WWF Forest Alliance was launched in April 1998. Within this framework, the Bank and WWF work with governments, the private sector, and civil society to significantly reduce the loss and degradation of all forest types worldwide. The Alliance promotes forest conservation and the adoption of international best practices in forest management.

Running Pure: The Importance of Forest Protected Areas to Drinking Water, 2003 (WWF, World Bank) (1,964 Kb PDF)