Jack Durant, the Co-Founder & Co-Director of Youngwilders, shares how funders and EFN stepped up to help their youth-led organisation in its early days by providing much more than financial support and helping them grow more effectively.
Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, effectiveness, fundraising, youth
Whatever the scale, and wherever the location, most of our funding could be better spent if we ensure the work being proposed is based on reliable evidence, whether that be from academic literature, from centuries (or millennia) of local understanding, or from other sources. Funders can be instrumental in encouraging applicants to check the available evidence for the actions they are proposing, to ensure they have the best chance of success.
Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, effectiveness
COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity has set a course for nations to significantly step up their actions to halt the loss of biodiversity. But will the new ‘plan of action’ for nature adopted at COP15 – termed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – succeed? In this blog, Catherine shares her personal reflections on the conference and the 'reasons to be cheerful', despite the challenges left unresolved.
Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, COP15, indigenous peoples, policy work
In this blog, Katy Scholfield aims to help build awareness and attend to the intersection of social and environmental justice to bring about increasing recognition and respect for the intrinsic value of all beings, human and nonhuman. This blog explores the Arcus Foundation's Great Apes and Gibbons Program goal of reconciling the well-being and resilience of local, Indigenous, and forest-dependent communities with wildlife conservation objectives.
Keywords: communities, conservation, human rights, indigenous peoples, intersectionality
With large-scale environmental events such as the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress (IUCN WCC) and the upcoming UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP15) gaining more attention – particularly among mainstream media – what can environmental funders do to support their grantees and help to ensure their ideas and concerns are heard within these spaces? In this piece, Jim Pettiward explains how Synchronicity Earth championed its partners and helped to promote a broad and diverse range of voices at IUCN WCC this year.
Keywords: advocacy, conservation, indigenous peoples, policy work
How can we maximize the effectiveness of grant-making in the international conservation field? This article is based on my experience in international environmental conservation, both as head of implementing nonprofits for 35 years, and as a foundation grant officer supporting in-country organizations for 15 years. I have witnessed both very effective – and ineffective – grant making practices, and would like to share my perspectives on best practices.
Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, effectiveness, funding overseas
Applied research ensures that actions to combat global challenges such as biodiversity loss are effective, resources are used efficiently, and outcomes for nature and people are understood and sustained. But government funding for such research is being reduced, just when we need it most.
Keywords: agriculture, biodiversity, conservation, research
When thinking about how to focus their environmental giving, funders often think about three dimensions of work they can support: the thematic issue addressed, the approach used and the location or geography of the work. Jon and Harriet argue that funders tend to inhabit a fourth dimension, values (or discourses), which consciously or not bound the limits of their giving.
Keywords: conservation, effectiveness, justice, systems change
Biodiversity projects by their nature often require sustained investment until a clear tipping point has been reached. Equally, the factors driving nature loss and biodiversity decline are pervasive: large-scale action, able to bring a suite of habitats and entire ecosystems back to health, is a demonstrably effective mechanism to restore biodiversity at a scale where it is more likely to survive into the future. EU LIFE funding has provided this large-scale, long-term funding for landscape-level conservation. On leaving the EU, Scotland and the rest of the UK are no longer eligible to apply for LIFE funding and there are currently no proposals on how it will be replaced. So what are the options going forward?
Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, effectiveness, joined-up-thinking, restoration
For conservation to truly be successful in stemming the ongoing biodiversity losses being experienced across the globe, we need to make concerted efforts to measure the impact of specific interventions, thereby generating evidence to inform the development of more impactful conservation strategies in the future. As part of an MPhil in Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge, Salisha Chandra undertook a research project to generate insights into and best practices in conservation impact measurement and reporting. Here are the key recommendations to emerge from her research for conservation funders to encourage better monitoring and evaluation practice by their grantees.
Keywords: biodiversity, conservation, effectiveness