Publications

From African savannas to Himalayan peaks, oceanic waters to America‚'s Great Plains, your support fuels tremendous progress for wildlife around the world. This report details how your support helped pilot cutting edge conservation approaches, advance scientific research and technology, strengthen political will and community engagement for conservation, and celebrate new milestones for species recovery.

During the second half of 2024, WWF conducted a third annual assessment of 40 banks‚' seafood-related policies and disclosures to understand how they are, or are not, effectively implementing the tools at their disposal‚ – such as sector policies, due diligence processes, and sustainable finance products‚ – to manage, minimize and eliminate risks as well as maximize opportunities related to the sustainability and resilience of their seafood portfolios. This report highlights key findings from our 2024 assessment, compares the results against last year‚'s findings to monitor progress, provides actionable recommendations for banks, and directs readers to practical resources to guide next steps.

Overall, this year's results show that during 2024, 19 banks‚ – (48% of those assessed)‚ – demonstrated some improvements against last year‚'s baseline. Of these, five banks (13%) improved specifically on seafood-related "client expectations" indicators and six banks (15%) disclosed new information about seafood-related eligibility criteria for sustainable finance frameworks and/or issued new blue-labeled products supporting sustainable seafood. While encouraging, more progress is still needed to ensure that banks‚' policies sufficiently prevent and/or manage their exposure to these risks.

This year's report also sought to quantify the potential impact of observed policy improvements. In early 2025, WWF commissioned Profundo to analyze the seafood-related financing of eight banks documented to have updated or published new seafood-related sector and environmental and social risk management (ESRM) policies since the start of this benchmarking assessment in 2023. This research indicates that these eight banks have committed at least US $27 B in finance to 29 major seafood companies during just the past five years, comprising approximately 20% of all identified finance to these companies. As these new and enhanced policies come into effect, their potential to drive real improvements to the way companies manage impacts and risks in the water is significant. More progress by banks to improve their seafood policies can have a major impact on redirecting mainstream finance‚ – at scale‚ – towards more sustainable outcomes.

See the 2023 baseline assessment here .

See the 2022 baseline assessment here .

Towards Nature Positive for the Ocean is a first-of-its-kind guide created to help companies operating in marine and coastal environments take credible, science-based action to support the global nature-positive goal‚ – halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 and achieving full recovery by 2050.

What sets this report apart is its dedicated focus on the ocean‚'s unique ecological, legal, and governance challenges. Building on leading global frameworks like the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) and Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), it provides tailored guidance for key ocean-based sectors: offshore wind, shipping, coastal and marine tourism, and seafood.

Using the AR3T action framework‚ – Avoid, Reduce, Restore & Regenerate, and Transform‚ – the report outlines actionable pathways for companies to:

• Avoid future negative impacts on ocean ecosystems
• Reduce existing pressures where impacts are unavoidable
• Restore and regenerate degraded marine habitats
• Transform business models, practices, and value chains for long-term resilience

This report offers businesses a practical entry point to align with biodiversity goals and lead the way toward a sustainable, nature-positive ocean economy.

The current trajectory of aquaculture feed and feed ingredient production contributes significantly to environmental degradation, including deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and nutrient pollution. Shifting to more sustainable feed ingredients and precision feeding can reduce such impacts while improving aquaculture efficiency and productivity. WWF is working to enhance the aquaculture sector by integrating innovative feed technologies, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and promoting alternative protein sources that improve environmental and economic performance.

Without scaled innovation in feed and ingredients, the aquaculture sector will continue to contribute to deforestation, overfishing, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity loss. WWF‚'s goal is to transition global aquaculture towards more sustainable models by integrating cutting-edge feed technologies, reducing direct and indirect environmental impacts, promoting biodiversity, and ensuring equitable economic opportunities across value chains.

This publication introduces a major update to one of the most widely used global wetland datasets. GLWD v2 integrates decades of satellite and ground data into a single, harmonized, high-resolution map of 33 different inland water and wetland classes. Designed to support hydrological, ecological, and conservation applications, the database addresses inconsistencies in previous mapping efforts by distinguishing between permanent and seasonal wetlands, natural and artificial waterbodies, and a range of ecological features like salinity, vegetation, and soil type. With an intuitive classification system and fractional grid cell coverage, this powerful new tool provides researchers, conservationists, and policymakers with a detailed baseline for monitoring and managing wetland ecosystems. Explore the new interactive online map.

Among policymakers, practitioners, companies, funders, and investors, nature-based solutions (NbS) and landscape and jurisdictional approaches (LA/JAs) continue to gain prominence as means to halt and reverse nature loss.

However, these concepts overlap in scope, and the synergies between them are not universally understood.

Given the multitude of terms used to describe NbS and LA/JAs, many ask:

• How are they similar and different?
• Is one approach more effective?
• How are NbS and LA/JAs complementary?

In this piece, WWF and CDP aim to answer these questions, beginning by defining each approach and ultimately addressing the potential for NbS and LA/JAs to advance the international nature agenda and realize political and corporate commitments outlined in the:

• Global Biodiversity Framework;
• Paris Agreement;
• Science Based Targets initiative; and
• Science Based Targets Network.
  

As part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s and WWF’s engagement to support the development of an ambitious and effective international legally binding instrument, this document outlines examples of reuse initiatives across the Global South. This document contains a selection of case studies illustrating reuse initiatives across the Global South. Each case study is presented with essential details, including application, organization, geographic reach, and key statistics.

This brief summarizes the results of modeling analysis to determine potential priority areas for Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for climate resilience for people and infrastructure in Indonesia. Four key benefits provided by nature were assessed: sediment retention (erosion control), flood risk reduction, water recharge (for supply), and coastal protection (of people and infrastructure). It closes with recommendations for how to integrate these analyses in infrastructure development, climate adaptation, and conservation planning moving forward. The analysis provides useful information for planners within Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas), Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning / National Land Agency (ATR/BPN), Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Forestry, Geospatial Information Agency (BIG), National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), the Peat and Mangrove Restoration Agency (BRGM), local government units, and other relevant government departments at the national and subnational levels in guiding infrastructure planning and siting decisions.

KEY FINDINGS:

• Ecosystems most impacted by road infrastructure and settlement development provide significant benefits, supporting climate resilience for nearly half the population, 147 million people, and 68% of the road network, on just 16% of Indonesia‚'s lands.
• Evaluating all intact ecosystems nationwide that could support NbS benefits, conserving priority priority areas on 18% of Indonesia‚'s land area supports climate resilience for 113 million people and 44% of the road network.
• Restoring degraded forests found on just 11% of the country provides the best opportunities to invest in multiple NbS to enhance climate resilience, benefiting roughly half the population, 143 million people, and a little over half, 47,000 km or 53% of the road network..
• The majority of these priority areas are outside the protected area network, necessitating new regulatory approaches or land use management schemes for successful conservation or restoration efforts.
• There are, however, also immediate "win-win" opportunities for NbS investments under conservation or restoration inside protected areas and Key Biodiversity Areas that would simultaneously support climate resilience for people and infrastructure and biodiversity outcomes.
• These analyses can serve as valuable inputs to support NbS mainstreaming to achieve climate and biodiversity goals in national and subnational policies and their implementation, including in the Medium and Long-Term Development Plans and associated processes.
• Achieving this requires investments in training and capacity building programs at all levels across these ministries and key departments in how to assess and integrate NbS in infrastructure planning. WWF and the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM) have developed such training materials for this purpose under the SIPA project.
• To ensure maximum utility for planners across departments and ministries, maps and associated data should be integrated into existing key ministry and departmental web platforms and centralized national data and mapping platforms.