WWF's enduring partnerships with USAID

WWF has partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for over 25 years to advance conservation and biodiversity protection initiatives around the world. Recognizing that nature is essential to international development and sustainable livelihoods, WWF has worked with USAID in over 40 countries to conserve natural resources; help communities protect and restore biodiversity; mitigate and adapt to climate change; promote gender equality; and reduce corruption.

WWF is committed to partnerships with governments and multilateral institutions at national, regional and global levels to ensure that people and nature can thrive. Working together, we leverage our best assets and develop solutions to the world’s most pressing conservation challenges.

Learn more about WWF’s conservation partnerships as part of our work with the U.S. government.

Featured projects

Learn more about some of the biggest nature conservation partnerships around the globe that WWF is currently implementing or recently completed with USAID:

Protecting Wildlife and Wild Places from Nature Crimes

HELPING PEOPLE, WILDLIFE AND FORESTS IN VIET NAM

Decades of illegal logging and wildlife trade, poaching, and agricultural conversion in Viet Nam threaten vital ecosystems and exacerbate poverty in vulnerable communities. WWF is working with USAID, in coordination with the Government of Viet Nam, local communities, and other conservation partners, on the Biodiversity Conservation and Saving Threatened Wildlife projects to combat illegal wildlife trafficking and deforestation to conserve Viet Nam’s rich biodiversity while helping local communities develop sustainable sources of income.

TARGETING NATURAL RESOURCE CORRUPTION

Corruption undermines sustainable natural resource management efforts, drives resources away from the public good and into private hands, and facilitates nature crimes. The USAID-funded Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC) project focused from 2018-2024 on harnessing knowledge, generating evidence, and supporting innovative policy and practice for more effective anti-corruption programming to conserve wildlife, fisheries, and forests. TNRC was a Leader with Associates award, implemented by WWF, in partnership with the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre at the Chr. Michelsen Institute, TRAFFIC, and the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, in collaboration with the Basel Institute on Governance.

STOPPING WILDLIFE CRIME IN NAMIBIA AND KAZA

Illegal poaching poses a dire threat to numerous species in southern Africa, including elephants and rhinos. USAID and WWF launched the six-year Combating Wildlife Crime Project in 2017 to stabilize the populations of black rhinos in Namibia and elephants in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), including by working closely with local authorities to enhance their wildlife crime surveillance capacity using new technology and modernized field procedures. By the project’s conclusion in June 2023, there had been no reports of illegal killings of black rhinos in northwest Namibia in three years. And a multi-country survey of elephants in the KAZA area – which is home to half of Africa’s remaining elephants – found that the total population is stable.

Working with Local Communities to Conserve Natural Resources

PARTNERING WITH INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN THE AMAZON

Indigenous people's active participation in the sustainable economic, cultural and environmental development of the Amazon is essential for the long-term conservation of the world's largest tropical rainforest. The USAID-funded Amazon Indigenous Rights and Resources project, managed by WWF in coordination with Indigenous organizations and nonprofit partners, supported educational resources to expand Indigenous leaders' advocacy capacities and helped Indigenous enterprises with business development in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. From 2019 to 2024, these enhanced advocacy efforts by Indigenous communities resulted in policy measures to protect their rights and the Amazon being adopted by major international institutions, including the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, and reflected in outcomes of recent climate change and biodiversity COPs, the IUCN World Conservation Congress, and the Escazú Agreement to protect the environment and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean. The project further enhanced the territorial monitoring and protection mechanisms of two Indigenous territories in Brazil (1 million hectares) and 21 in Peru (185,785 hectares), benefiting 11,344 people.

STRENGTHENING INFRASTRUCTURE SAFEGUARDS TO CONSERVE BIODIVERSITY IN ASIA

The Asia’s Linear Infrastructure safeGuarding Nature (ALIGN) project, funded by USAID, was created in response to Asia’s rapid expansion of linear infrastructure—especially roads, railways, and power lines. The ALIGN Project’s goal is to enhance the development and implementation of effective linear infrastructure safeguards that protect people and nature from harm. The project will be implemented throughout Asia with a particular emphasis on three focal countries: India, Mongolia, and Nepal. The ALIGN Project is implemented by WWF in partnership with the Center for Large Landscape Conservation.

ENHANCING FLOOD RESILIENCE IN PAKISTAN

Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan in 2022 demonstrated the urgency of the climate crisis. The Recharge Pakistan project – a collaboration between Pakistan's Ministry of Climate Change and the Federal Flood Commission, local communities, the Green Climate Fund, USAID, WWF and the Coca-Cola Foundation – works to reduce the region’s vulnerability to climate change through enhanced flood risk management.

INCREASING CIVIL SOCIETY PARTICIPATION IN GREATER MEKONG ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

Countries across the Greater Mekong – including Burma, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Viet Nam – face environmental challenges such as deforestation and water quality degradation that are often driven by poorly planned development, natural resource crime and corruption. The USAID-funded Mekong for the Future project implemented by WWF works increase the capacity of civil society organizations and citizens to engage in natural resource management policy development. USAID and WWF have to date achieved results in facilitating collaborations of civil society networks that promote resilient and inclusive environmental management.