Community Rights and Livelihoods

WWF supports collaborative conservation approaches that respect and contribute to community rights and livelihoods. Our work related to this revolves around the following three themes:

Scaling up community conservation
The shift in conservation approaches from site-based activities to a greater focus on enabling conditions, drivers and local-to-global links creates new opportunities to strengthen and scale-up community-based conservation and natural resource management.

WWF supports innovation, learning and technical assistance on strategies for scaling up community conservation, such as:

• facilitating lateral links across communities
• building capacity of support institutions
• promoting policy frameworks for community tenure, decentralized governance and sustainable livelihoods
• collaboration to address environment-related threats to community land

Indigenous people, local communities and REDD+
The emergence of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, and conserving, sustainably managing and enhancing forest carbon stocks (collectively referred to as REDD+) has generated interest in increasing support for the forest stewardship activities of indigenous peoples and local communities.

 Potential benefits associated with REDD+ initiatives include:

• strengthening community land and resource rights
• empowering community institutions
• increasing income through benefit sharing

However, REDD+ has also sparked concern about possible adverse impacts on indigenous and community resource rights, institutions and livelihoods.

WWF believes that for REDD+ to be effective in mitigating climate change, it must include strong social safeguards and benefits, such as contributions to community livelihoods and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. To address these issues, WWF:

• promotes innovative approaches to social safeguards and benefits within demonstration projects
• shares knowledge and experience on social aspects of REDD+
• advocates for high standards in REDD+ policy frameworks

Conservation and human rights
WWF is part of the Conservation Initiative on Human Rights (CIHR), a group of international conservation non-governmental organizations that seek to improve the practice of conservation by promoting integration of human rights in conservation policy and practice. 

CIHR members are interested in promoting positive links between conservation and rights of people to secure their livelihoods, enjoy healthy and productive environments and live with dignity. WWF believes that by working collectively and sharing information we can better advance our work in this field.

Other partners in this initiative are Birdlife International, Conservation International, Fauna & Flora International, IUCN, The Nature Conservancy, Wetlands International and the Wildlife Conservation Society.