FFI launches new resilience fund to support conservation partners worldwide

At Fauna & Flora International (FFI) we know that the only way we will effectively protect our natural world is by working with those who live and work closest to the threatened species and ecosystems we are striving to protect. Empowering locally led solutions is one of the Five Breakthroughs for Nature we need to see if we are to address the biodiversity and climate crises we face.

For many years we have worked hard, with limited resources, to enhance the capability, resilience and impact of our principal local partners.  Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, many of FFI’s local NGO and community-based partners from around the world have experienced serious negative impacts from the crisis. In response, we set up the FFI Partner Crisis Support Fund, with the generous help of Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. That fund provided 37 FFI partners with emergency funding, making a huge difference for organisations whose ability to continue their vital conservation work was severely affected by the pandemic.

Now, we are delighted to announce that thanks to a new multi-year commitment from Arcadia, FFI has established a new Conservation Resilience Fund to support conservation partner organisations around the world. The new fund recognises that shocks to our natural, economic and social systems – such as future pandemics and the impacts of climate change – are increasingly the norm. As threats evolve and intensify, so must the work and resilience of our partners.

Through the new fund, FFI will be developing a new Organisational Resilience Check tool that will help partners look much more specifically at what they can practically do to become more resilient, enabling them not only to survive shocks, but also to be better placed to predict them. The fund will also focus on supporting partners to develop conservation enterprise schemes, allowing them to find new income streams that will provide greater financial security. This tool, along with other resources developed under the grant, will be shared with the conservation community more widely through the open access website www.capacityforconservation.org.

FFI will be working with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to deliver areas of work supported by the fund.

At FFI, we believe that the solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises must support and empower those operating in the most adversely affected areas and who have the best understanding of the threats to nature and the complex social and economic processes underpinning those threats; something Arcadia’s generous new support recognises.