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Safeguarding the natural world
The growing and unsustainable demand by people for natural resources is putting the natural world under severe pressure
Globally, nearly a quarter of all mammal species and a third of amphibians are threatened with extinction. The rapid destruction of forests - every year an area the size of England is lost - not only harms forest-dwelling wildlife but also adds to the growing danger of climate change.
The increasing threat to some of the planet’s most important rivers, lakes and wetlands has been matched by a 29% decline in populations of freshwater wildlife in just 30 years. And in the oceans, 40 million tonnes of bycatch (including 300,000 marine mammals) are caught accidentally each year when targeting other species.
The threat to people and their livelihoods is, of course, of equal concern. For example, more than a billion people do not have access to clean water. Some 250 million people worldwide earn their living from fishing.
Around the world, WWF works with a wide range of partners in business, government and local communities to create sustainable solutions that take account of the needs of both people and nature.
Our practical conservation work with our colleagues in the global WWF Network focuses on safeguarding wildlife and places considered by WWF to be of global importance. This is supported by policy initiatives at a UK, EU and global level - creating the commercial and legal frameworks that ensure good governance of natural resources.
The growing and unsustainable demand by people for natural resources is at the heart of the problem. The demands made by human activities – such as agriculture, forestry, energy production, road building and poaching – are all having a serious impact.
The growing danger from climate change could also result in devastating consequences for our natural environment in the coming years.
With limited resources and limited time to make the required impact, WWF has had to focus its efforts on species considered to be of special ecological, economic and cultural importance. We work to stabilise or increase their numbers through practical conservation programmes and by challenging the trade in endangered wildlife.
WWF also works with business, government and local communities to create sustainable solutions that take account of the needs of both people as well as nature. Only by doing this will we ensure good governance of our natural resources.
Why protect rare and endangered species?
Protecting the world's species and their habitats lies at the heart of WWF's mission to conserve the earth's biodiversity and was the prime reason for the organisation's establishment in 1961.
While important in their own right, species are also critical for maintaining the fundamental balance of ecosystems.
As charismatic icons, species also provide unique opportunities for promoting and communicating critically important conservation and environmental issues.
Forests also provide raw materials for food, shelter and fuel, essential for the 1.2 billion people who live in extreme poverty around the world. And forests benefit our environment by regulating the climate, water cycles and soil erosion.
But the world's forests are in crisis. Only half of our original forest cover remains and, of that, only one-tenth is protected. We are currently losing around 13 million hectares of forest each year, according to the Global Forest Resources Assessment.
Forests are a key focus of WWF’s global conservation work. We promote and campaign for the protection, responsible management and restoration of forests and we aim to address consumption issues that directly or indirectly drive key threats to forests.
The main causes of forest loss and degradation are illegal and destructive logging, unsustainable forest management, conversion to agriculture, and infrastructural development. Deforestation is responsible for 15-20% of global CO2 emissions.
To address these threats, WWF-UK promotes forest conservation, implements credible certification and sustainable forest management, and tackles illegal logging and trade. We also support forest conservation field programmes in the Amazon basin, Atlantic forest, Borneo, Colombia, the coastal forests of east Africa, the eastern Himalayas, and New Guinea.
And scientific research has established a clear link between the health of the Amazon and the integrity of the global environment, especially our climate.
Rapidly expanding global markets for meat, soy and biofuels are another threat. The demand for these products is increasing the profitability of agriculture and strengthening the incentive for farmers to convert their legally-required forest reserves into pastures.
Large-scale transportation and energy infrastructure projects are other problems, as are weak governance and the lack of an integrated development vision.
Together, these threats could see the Amazon reach a tipping point where the climate dries and rainforest is replaced over large areas by a mixture of savannah and semi-arid ecosystems.
The destruction of and change in their habitats will adversely affect many species in the region.
WWF has been at the forefront of protecting the Amazon for more than 40 years. Our approach is succeeding because we engage local communities and partner with governments to identify mutual solutions that can bridge the needs of economic development and conservation.
We are working to support the creation and management of protected areas to maintain large blocks of intact forest.
In Brazil, through the Amazon Region Protected Areas Programme, WWF is working to create a network of federal and state protected areas to safeguard 60 million hectares of the Amazon by 2013.
We are improving responsible natural resource management to support the livelihoods of forest-dependent people and floodplain communities.
We are also reducing the impact of infrastructure development projects in the Amazon by working with governments and financing institutions to encourage best practice and the adoption of sound social and environmental criteria and measures, such as sound environmental impact assessments, in the development of roads, dams and other infrastructure.
WWF is engaging with key markets, such as timber, beef and soy, to encourage producers, investors, retailers and consumers to adopt responsible environmental and social criteria.
We are helping to develop new ways of valuing standing forests, both for the stores of carbon they hold and for the other services they provide.
We are helping to address climate change by maintaining forest cover. Some degree of climate change is now inevitable. Coping with the expected impacts will require coordinated and adaptive management, for example in the Amazon's major tributaries, which WWF is promoting.
Large parts of the island’s interior are still relatively unknown and undoubtedly harbour as yet unidentified species. Between 1994 and 2004, new species were discovered at the rate of three per month. The 16 million people on the island are equally diverse with over 200 languages still in use.
Half a million indigenous people still depend on Borneo’s forest for edible and medicinal plants, fish, meat, construction materials and water. The headwaters of the island’s major rivers rise in Borneo’s central highlands and are critical to ensuring reliable clean water supplies to a large number of human settlements, and to the thriving industries that have developed in coastal urban centres.
National and international demand for agricultural commodities and wood products mean land continues to be cleared at a frightening rate. Forest destruction is compounded by road and infrastructure development.
Borneo is extremely rich in mineral deposits. Mining, especially for coal and gold, has expanded rapidly in recent years, with clear signals that this will increase.
Between 1980 and 2000, it is estimated that more timber was harvested from Borneo than was exported from the Amazon and Congo basins combined. As a result, Borneo now has only 50% of its original forest left. At current rates, it is predicted that, in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, there will be no lowland forests left outside protected areas by 2010.
Land clearance has another, globally important, impact. An estimated 85% of Indonesia’s carbon emissions come from deforestation and degradation. This is a higher proportion than any other country in the world and makes it a major contibutor to global warming.
New Guinea covers less than 0.5% of the world's land area, yet contains up to 8% of the world’s species. Around half of these are unique to the island. New species continue to be discovered: in the past 10 years, some 794 new species have been officially recorded here.
Between 2004 and 2007, our major successes included the launch of 12 new protected areas covering 7,700 sq km and the launch of a 2,000 sq km transboundary protected area in the Transfly area of southern New Guinea.
Building on our achievements here since the mid-1990s, WWF is now uniquely placed to reshape how, in particular, industrial developments affect the island.
Our vision is that the people of New Guinea and its islands maintain their extraordinary natural and cultural heritage while meeting their development needs. By 2020 we aim to protect 200,000 sq km – almost the size of the UK – of the vast wilderness and frontier forests of New Guinea.
To help achieve this, we will lobby for a moratorium on new logging concessions in Papua New Guinea and for the existing moratorium on logging to be enforced in Indonesian Papua. We will also work to transform market demand and investments to achieve better practice in the oil and gas, forestry, oil palm and mining sectors.
Globally, nearly a quarter of all mammal species and a third of amphibians are threatened with extinction. The rapid destruction of forests - every year an area the size of England is lost - not only harms forest-dwelling wildlife but also adds to the growing danger of climate change.
The increasing threat to some of the planet’s most important rivers, lakes and wetlands has been matched by a 29% decline in populations of freshwater wildlife in just 30 years. And in the oceans, 40 million tonnes of bycatch (including 300,000 marine mammals) are caught accidentally each year when targeting other species.
The threat to people and their livelihoods is, of course, of equal concern. For example, more than a billion people do not have access to clean water. Some 250 million people worldwide earn their living from fishing.
Around the world, WWF works with a wide range of partners in business, government and local communities to create sustainable solutions that take account of the needs of both people and nature.
Our practical conservation work with our colleagues in the global WWF Network focuses on safeguarding wildlife and places considered by WWF to be of global importance. This is supported by policy initiatives at a UK, EU and global level - creating the commercial and legal frameworks that ensure good governance of natural resources.
Wildlife
With nearly a quarter of all mammal species and a third of amphibians threatened with extinction, there’s an urgent need to safeguard wildlife and the places in which they liveThe growing and unsustainable demand by people for natural resources is at the heart of the problem. The demands made by human activities – such as agriculture, forestry, energy production, road building and poaching – are all having a serious impact.
The growing danger from climate change could also result in devastating consequences for our natural environment in the coming years.
With limited resources and limited time to make the required impact, WWF has had to focus its efforts on species considered to be of special ecological, economic and cultural importance. We work to stabilise or increase their numbers through practical conservation programmes and by challenging the trade in endangered wildlife.
WWF also works with business, government and local communities to create sustainable solutions that take account of the needs of both people as well as nature. Only by doing this will we ensure good governance of our natural resources.
Why protect rare and endangered species?
Protecting the world's species and their habitats lies at the heart of WWF's mission to conserve the earth's biodiversity and was the prime reason for the organisation's establishment in 1961.
While important in their own right, species are also critical for maintaining the fundamental balance of ecosystems.
As charismatic icons, species also provide unique opportunities for promoting and communicating critically important conservation and environmental issues.
Forests
We cannot protect species without conserving their habitat. Forests contain as much as 90% of the world's terrestrial animal and plant life.Forests also provide raw materials for food, shelter and fuel, essential for the 1.2 billion people who live in extreme poverty around the world. And forests benefit our environment by regulating the climate, water cycles and soil erosion.
But the world's forests are in crisis. Only half of our original forest cover remains and, of that, only one-tenth is protected. We are currently losing around 13 million hectares of forest each year, according to the Global Forest Resources Assessment.
Forests are a key focus of WWF’s global conservation work. We promote and campaign for the protection, responsible management and restoration of forests and we aim to address consumption issues that directly or indirectly drive key threats to forests.
The main causes of forest loss and degradation are illegal and destructive logging, unsustainable forest management, conversion to agriculture, and infrastructural development. Deforestation is responsible for 15-20% of global CO2 emissions.
To address these threats, WWF-UK promotes forest conservation, implements credible certification and sustainable forest management, and tackles illegal logging and trade. We also support forest conservation field programmes in the Amazon basin, Atlantic forest, Borneo, Colombia, the coastal forests of east Africa, the eastern Himalayas, and New Guinea.
Amazon
The Amazon spans eight countries in South America and one overseas territory and contains one-third of the planet’s remaining rainforests. The source of one-fifth of all fresh water on Earth, it is the world’s largest river basin. It sustains millions of species, and is one of the world’s last refuges for jaguars, harpy eagles and pink river dolphins. Today, more than 30 million people live in the region. Although most live in large urban centres, almost all inhabitants remain dependent on the Amazon’s ecosystem for food, shelter and livelihood.And scientific research has established a clear link between the health of the Amazon and the integrity of the global environment, especially our climate.
Threats
The Amazon is still 80% intact but it faces a number of ever-growing threats. Rapid deforestation threatens the region. At current rates, as much as 55% of its rainforests could be gone by 2030, contributing significantly to global warming – which, in turn, poses a threat to the Amazon.Rapidly expanding global markets for meat, soy and biofuels are another threat. The demand for these products is increasing the profitability of agriculture and strengthening the incentive for farmers to convert their legally-required forest reserves into pastures.
Large-scale transportation and energy infrastructure projects are other problems, as are weak governance and the lack of an integrated development vision.
Together, these threats could see the Amazon reach a tipping point where the climate dries and rainforest is replaced over large areas by a mixture of savannah and semi-arid ecosystems.
The destruction of and change in their habitats will adversely affect many species in the region.
Solutions
The immense scale of the challenges in the Amazon requires a long-term conservation vision backed by strong scientific expertise.WWF has been at the forefront of protecting the Amazon for more than 40 years. Our approach is succeeding because we engage local communities and partner with governments to identify mutual solutions that can bridge the needs of economic development and conservation.
We are working to support the creation and management of protected areas to maintain large blocks of intact forest.
In Brazil, through the Amazon Region Protected Areas Programme, WWF is working to create a network of federal and state protected areas to safeguard 60 million hectares of the Amazon by 2013.
We are improving responsible natural resource management to support the livelihoods of forest-dependent people and floodplain communities.
We are also reducing the impact of infrastructure development projects in the Amazon by working with governments and financing institutions to encourage best practice and the adoption of sound social and environmental criteria and measures, such as sound environmental impact assessments, in the development of roads, dams and other infrastructure.
WWF is engaging with key markets, such as timber, beef and soy, to encourage producers, investors, retailers and consumers to adopt responsible environmental and social criteria.
We are helping to develop new ways of valuing standing forests, both for the stores of carbon they hold and for the other services they provide.
We are helping to address climate change by maintaining forest cover. Some degree of climate change is now inevitable. Coping with the expected impacts will require coordinated and adaptive management, for example in the Amazon's major tributaries, which WWF is promoting.
Borneo
Heart of Borneo
Borneo is the world’s third-largest island and, until the 1950s, had largely escaped the environmental ravages seen on neighbouring isles. It is home to many globally significant species, including orang-utans, pygmy elephants, Sumatran rhinos and clouded leopards. More than 600 bird species and an astonishing 15,000 types of plant are also found here.Large parts of the island’s interior are still relatively unknown and undoubtedly harbour as yet unidentified species. Between 1994 and 2004, new species were discovered at the rate of three per month. The 16 million people on the island are equally diverse with over 200 languages still in use.
Half a million indigenous people still depend on Borneo’s forest for edible and medicinal plants, fish, meat, construction materials and water. The headwaters of the island’s major rivers rise in Borneo’s central highlands and are critical to ensuring reliable clean water supplies to a large number of human settlements, and to the thriving industries that have developed in coastal urban centres.
Threats
Over the past few decades much of Borneo’s lowland forest cover has been fragmented and cleared for timber and to create plantations for the production of palm oil and paper pulp.National and international demand for agricultural commodities and wood products mean land continues to be cleared at a frightening rate. Forest destruction is compounded by road and infrastructure development.
Borneo is extremely rich in mineral deposits. Mining, especially for coal and gold, has expanded rapidly in recent years, with clear signals that this will increase.
Between 1980 and 2000, it is estimated that more timber was harvested from Borneo than was exported from the Amazon and Congo basins combined. As a result, Borneo now has only 50% of its original forest left. At current rates, it is predicted that, in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, there will be no lowland forests left outside protected areas by 2010.
Land clearance has another, globally important, impact. An estimated 85% of Indonesia’s carbon emissions come from deforestation and degradation. This is a higher proportion than any other country in the world and makes it a major contibutor to global warming.
Solutions
Work is under way to safeguard a huge area of the island known as the Heart of Borneo.
In 2007, with support from WWF, the island's three governments – Brunei
Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia – committed to protect, manage and
restore 220,000 sq km of forests (slightly less than the size of the
UK).
This historic agreement will enable the protection and sustainable use
of the forests and protect water catchment areas, as well as conserving
the plants and animals within the Heart of Borneo.
WWF’s Heart of Borneo initiative also aims to ensure that key UK buyers
of timber and palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia commit to using only
sustainably-produced goods.
We also want to see the rate of deforestation of high conservation areas drop to zero.
We are working with local communities to help diversify their income
sources, thereby reducing the pressure they put on the forest.
We are working with key sectors – timber, oil palm, mining and
financial investment – to minimise the impact of their activities.
We support orang-utan, rhino and elephant conservation within the Heart of Borneo.
New Guinea
The island of New Guinea plays host to the largest pristine rainforest in the Asia-Pacific and the third largest rainforest in the world. Its wetlands are the jewel of the region. These habitats are home to more than 800 bird species, including extraordinary birds of paradise. They also contain over 500 types of reptile and amphibian, mammal species such as the tree kangaroo and 25,000 plant species. The island is unparalleled for cultural diversity, with 1,100 different languages spoken.New Guinea covers less than 0.5% of the world's land area, yet contains up to 8% of the world’s species. Around half of these are unique to the island. New species continue to be discovered: in the past 10 years, some 794 new species have been officially recorded here.
Threats
The island’s environment is under severe pressure from unsustainable or poorly planned development.
New Guinea faces growing threats from illegal and unregulated logging,
subsistence exploitation, freshwater contamination (from mining and
logging) and fires.
Conversion for palm oil is another threat, as are commercial mining and
road construction. Invasive or exotic species pose a threat, as do
unsustainable fisheries and global climate change.
A destructive patchwork of logging concessions, agricultural
plantations (such as oil palm), mines and roads are already planned,
which could see the island lose a third of its remaining rainforest.
The clearance of this biologically rich forest will not only destroy
precious habitat for many species, but also one of the few chances the
people of the island have for long-term economic growth.
The challenge is tremendous. The two countries that share the island,
Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, are experiencing the highest rates of
illegal logging and deforestation in the world today. Only through a
concerted effort by governments, the private sector and NGOs will New
Guinea keep its forests for generations to come.
Solutions
WWF focuses on linking science and effective policy with community action to ensure the protection and sustainable use of forest, freshwater and marine resources throughout New Guinea.Between 2004 and 2007, our major successes included the launch of 12 new protected areas covering 7,700 sq km and the launch of a 2,000 sq km transboundary protected area in the Transfly area of southern New Guinea.
Building on our achievements here since the mid-1990s, WWF is now uniquely placed to reshape how, in particular, industrial developments affect the island.
Our vision is that the people of New Guinea and its islands maintain their extraordinary natural and cultural heritage while meeting their development needs. By 2020 we aim to protect 200,000 sq km – almost the size of the UK – of the vast wilderness and frontier forests of New Guinea.
To help achieve this, we will lobby for a moratorium on new logging concessions in Papua New Guinea and for the existing moratorium on logging to be enforced in Indonesian Papua. We will also work to transform market demand and investments to achieve better practice in the oil and gas, forestry, oil palm and mining sectors.
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