Partnership

At Fauna & Flora International (FFI) we believe that the only way to effectively protect our natural world in the long term is by working with others, and particularly with those who live and work closest to the threatened species and ecosystems we are striving to protect.

This is because local people and organisations have the best understanding of the threats to the wildlife on their doorstep and the complex social and economic processes underpinning those threats. They are also the ones who can effect the most meaningful change in the long term.

Partnership is therefore at the very heart of our organisation and is central to everything we do. We work collaboratively with a huge range of people and groups – from communities, governments, NGOs and businesses based locally, to international organisations, corporations and multilateral bodies.

The way in which we engage with each individual group or organisation is tailored to the circumstances under which they are operating. We choose our partners carefully, but they are the ones who define the parameters of the relationship. In this way, we can be sure that we can give them the support that they want and need.

We have been working with many of our partners for years, some even for decades. We have immense respect for their knowledge and capabilities, and in return we bring to the partnership our own unique perspective and expertise, gained through the skills of our staff and over a century of institutional experience in conservation.

The support we offer ranges greatly, from giving advice and strategic support to help partner organisations grow and enhance their impact, to providing practical support in the form of training, research, equipment or funding to help get activities off the ground. We help develop protected area management and species recovery plans. We act as an impartial facilitator to improve dialogue between different stakeholders. We help ensure that communities are able to play an active role in conservation and support them in developing sustainable livelihoods. We help corporates reduce their impact on biodiversity and hold them to account. The list is as varied as the partners with whom we work.

As well as one-to-one relationships with our various partners around the world, FFI also works with other international organisations to multiply our impact and tackle conservation challenges at a global scale.

The aims of these collaborations range from protecting species and habitats, such as through the Global Trees Campaign, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme and the Rapid Response Facility, to supporting emerging conservation leaders, such as through the Conservation Leadership Programme.

Other collaborations are focused on understanding the wider threats to our planet and working together to find innovative new ways to solve these, such as through United for Wildlife, the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, and WILDLABS.

We are supported in this work by our generous members, supporters and donors including a number of funding partners such as Arcadia and the players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

In 2015-2016, Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin – commissioned an external review of the work it had funded through FFI. The findings of the review, presented in a 75-page report, were hugely positive and included some very clear statements about how FFI works with partner organisations.

The report refers to FFI as, “a genuine collaborator in these relationships, respecting their partners’ own goals even while pushing for progress, remaining in the background while their partners take credit for any gains, and recognising individual projects as components of longer-term relationships.”

It goes on to say, “Playing such a role effectively has required considerable skill, judgement and sometimes patience and fortitude in a variety of different contexts, where FFI’s capacity to adapt its approach to local conditions has been critical,” it continued.

The report also states that, “few other NGOs can match FFI in the quality of their work with local partners.”

Although we have long prided ourselves on our collaborative approach, this external validation by a team of expert evaluators was extremely gratifying – particularly given that their research included interviews with partners themselves.