Monitoring for impact

WWF’s scientists partner with conservation actors around the world to answer critical questions about what works in conservation and why. Drawing on different scientific disciplines, participatory approaches, and systems thinking, our approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning is rooted in collaboration and guided by the critical need to invest in conservation solutions that deliver positive results for both people and nature. Not only does our work aim to generate evidence to inform conservation, it seeks to draw insight from existing diverse knowledge sources and systems—including practitioner experience, traditional and Indigenous knowledge, and scientific research—to support program strategy, design, and implementation. We work with the environmental evidence and knowledge synthesis communities of practice to bring reliable and relevant evidence to bear to inform critical conservation decisions.

WWF scientists have developed information, tools, and methods in collaboration with the conservation community as well as linked sectors such as health, environmental management, development, computer and data science, to support organizational monitoring. These resources and collaborations enable WWF to generate, synthesize, and deliver evidence-based insights on critical topics—such as community-based conservation, governance of protected and conserved areas, and nature-based interventions. In particular, we work to harness technological innovations such as remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and data science capacities to support conservation actors to efficiently assess change.

Resources and Tools

Elinor

This web-based tool and data system was designed to support conservationists in monitoring the governance and management of area-based conservation. Elinor streamlines data collection, entry, and visualization to support more evidence-informed and collaborative decision-making.

Transforming Conservation: A Practical Guide to Evidence and Decision-making

There are problems with the decision-making processes currently widely used, leading to ineffective use of evidence, faulty decisions, wasting of resources, and the erosion of public and political support. In this book, an international team of experts provides solutions.

Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE)

This is an open community of stakeholders working towards a sustainable global environment and the conservation of biodiversity. CEE seeks to promote and deliver evidence from a range of sources focused on issues of greatest concern to environmental policy and practice.

Database of Evidence Reviews

Environmental Evidence informs policy and practice by publishing evidence from a range of sources (including meta-analyses) relevant to environmental management.

The Alliance for Conservation Evidence and Sustainability (ACES)

ACES is a voluntary network of conservation non-governmental organizations committed to improving conservation monitoring, evaluation, and learning. Operating as a formal collaborative between 2016 and 2022, ACES developed tools to inform the generation, synthesis, and use of evidence to improve community-based conservation and conservation decision-making.