Funding for nature conservation: a study of public finance networks at World Wide Fund for nature (WWF)

WWF describes itself as a network organisation. Its composition and structure is dynamic, and our description below is based on the period corresponding to the data collection (2014–2018), and not to more recent organisational changes.

At the time of our research WWF was composed of about 30 National Offices (NOs) and 27 Programme offices (POs).¹ The National Offices were independent legal entities, each with their own independent (Supervisory) Board. They were subject to the national regulatory frameworks within which they operated. The top 10 National offices contributed about 75% of WWF’s gross global income, with approximately a fifth of this income coming from the WWF US office alone (WWF 2013). The Programme offices operated under the auspices of WWF-International and WWF-USA. They constituted the local WWF offices mostly in biodiverse rich developing countries. They were partly dependent on National Offices and National Offices’ networks for funding because often they were unable to raise sufficient funds in their own countries or regions. This funding was often restricted and short-term, posing their biggest internal challenge. They were mainly funded by the WWF National offices, but under the management of WWF International or WWF US offices. Their main function was to implement the WWF mission in countries and regions where there was no National Office presence. They were also considered ‘incubators’ for new National Offices, as seen in Brazil, Indonesia and Russia (Programme offices in the WWF Network 2010, p. 19). In 2012 funding from external sources grew the fastest in WWF offices situated in Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC countries), marking a 25% increase (WWF 2013).

At the global level, WWF had four key governing bodies: The Council, the Assembly, the International Board of Trustees and the Network Executive Team (NET hereafter). The Council members, consisting of the chairs and presidents of all the WWF National Offices, drove and championed the global agenda and appointed and advised the International Board directly. The Assembly was composed of CEOs and Programme Office representatives of all WWF offices. They were deeply consulted by the NET and together contributed and developed WWF’s global strategies. They appointed NET members and provided annual feedback on NET’s performance. The NET and the International Board constituted the two main decision making bodies. The NET reported to the International Board. It developed WWF’s long term strategies for approval by the International Board. NET members were selected through a voting process and consisted of the Director General (chair), four members from top contributing NO offices, one representative from each of Africa, Asia–Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean (3 in total), and two representatives elected from the Assembly. The International Board was the highest governance body in WWF and was composed of 13 members. They set WWF’s broad direction and conducted careful stewardship of the WWF brand. They also oversaw WWF International, WWF’s global secretariat office. WWF has no headquarters.

WWF begun to structurally work with public finance in 1988 with the formation of a forum that was internally referred to as GAA (Governments and Aid Agencies) and as Public Sector Partnerships (PSP) since 2010. In spite of the name change, the core structure of GAA and PSP has remained largely the same although their specific composition and strategies have changed over time, as shown below.

Since 1990 conservation organisations have faced a sharp decline in conservation funding that prompted them to re-strategise on fundraising (Chapin 2004). WWF programmed a GAA strategy which was formally established in 1998 (individual country offices already had a strategy prior to this). The main goal of GAA’s new strategy was to increase WWF income by attracting public funds from governments and aid agencies to finance WWF conservation projects (Network Strategy for PSP Engagement 2011–2015). The focus was on saving a specific population of an endangered species and their habitats (Timeline of WWF’s conservation achievements 2011), with special attention to forests and local communities. In 2006 the GAA strategy was reprogrammed and its goal became to increase GAA support, both policies and funds, for WWF global conservation priorities through strategic engagement, policy dialogue and quality management. WWF was concerned that although the total surface area under conservation had grown over 60% between 1992 and 2006, financial commitments from national and international sources to effectively implement this growth had been sluggish, resulting in ‘paper parks’ (Gutman and Davidson 2007).

Essentially, the WWF public finance network included switchers made up of an internal community of practice of GAA staff members from different offices targeting governments and aid agencies for financing. The core of this GAA staff were GAA Focal points, the GAA Centre of Development and the GAA Management Team. GAA Focal points were the key switchers within the organisation and were located in what was referred to as Focal Point offices. They were responsible for making and managing relationships with bilateral donors in their own countries. All Focal Points staff were located in high income OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, which were also the sites of WWF NOs. OECD countries include the largest funders of international aid. Focal offices for multilateral donors were strategically located in close proximity to the headquarters of multilateral donors. For example, the WWF-European Policy Office is located in Brussels where the European Commission sits while WWF-US has an office in Washington where the US government, World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) reside. Focal points also acted as gate-keepers between WWF and its key donors. Every WWF office was expected to engage in prior consultation with the relevant focal point before contacting decentralized delegations or embassies of donors in their respective country, and hence before, for example, having any dialogue on policy or submitting a funding proposal. They were also expected to keep the focal point constantly updated on both discussions and intentions. Focal points also aimed at coordinating the relationship between a donor’s central office and its decentralised offices by playing a “value-added advisory role with the GAA” (WWF 2010, p. 11).

The GAA Centre of Development (CoD) was central to the WWF public finance network both in programming and switching. As a programmer, the GAA CoD developed common strategies, practices, standards and work programmes. It was situated in the WWF secretariat in Gland, Switzerland where it also operated as the GAA hub, creating communication platforms, events and organising shared learning. It also had a Business Plan that was updated on a regular basis to guide the organisation in implementing the GAA Strategy. As a switcher, the GAA CoD also coordinated the GAA function across WWF and aimed at building the capacity of WWF to implement organisation wide efforts to engage with governments and aid agencies. It sponsored and supported collaborative efforts, including those made in developing new partnerships.

The GAA Management Team—managing and supporting all GAA staff—served as the steering group for GAA CoD and provided “overall guidance, coordination, facilitation, oversight and monitoring of progress on the implementation” of the WWF GAA Strategy (WWF 2010, p. 14). This team had 9 members, mostly from OECD countries. In addition, others could be invited to Management Team meetings on an ad hoc basis to make specific contributions.

In order to increase global public finance within WWF, GAA largely targeted Official Development Assistance (ODA). ODA funds operated on the nexus of development and environment, influencing WWF to pay special attention to people and nature conservation through its knowledge and expertise. Typically, by functioning as a switcher, WWF was at the same time both recipient and donor. GAAs focus was on connecting to key donors through staff members located in offices in close proximity, for the purpose of increasing grants that would go into conservation projects targeting specific species and their habitats. The networks were simple and more-or-less straightforward.

Around 2010, WWF shifted its programme to influencing and leveraging public finance flows, rather than merely increasing income. It was marked by a name change from GAA to PSP (Public Sector Partnerships) in 2010 and a new objective to increase the effectiveness and impact of WWF’s strategic engagement with the Public Sector Finance architecture and institutions, “… thereby improving WWF’s ability to influence and guide [Public Sector Finance] institutions, policy and financing decisions in support of WWF’s mission” (Network Strategy for PSP Engagement 2011–2015, p. 2). The idea behind this was that policy guides budgets and by influencing governments to foreground the environment in their development agendas, there would be bigger budgets for the environment in general and subsequently for WWF’s conservation priorities. WWF therefore saw its role as influencer, and related as a knowledge and technical expert, capacity builder, technical assistant, think tank and disseminator of lessons (PSP Induction course 2014; WWF 2014). In other words, WWF programming involved influencing goals within and beyond conservation networks using information, knowledge and expertise as part of an ambitious agenda for global conservation.

However, WWF itself also increasingly became prone to being programmed by networks both within and external to conservation networks, transforming the goals, strategies and structure of WWF itself.

First, environmental mainstreaming—by integrating environmental issues in all governmental and societal sectors—became a dominant discourse not only in development organisations but also in conservation organisations. PSP invited the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the UK Department for International Development (DfID) to share on the topic during the 2010 PSP Focal Points Forum held in the UK. In response to this discourse, donors such as the Asian Development Bank begun to demand environmental mainstreaming to be included in WWF proposals. Mainstreaming the environment was also at the core of WWFs new strategy mentioned above and implied linking conservation to, for example, poverty, climate change and ecosystem based adaptation so as to redirect financial flows to conservation priorities. Obviously, this called for collaboration by forming partnerships and coalitions by exchanging information, finding consensus points and overlapping agendas. WWF understood that these collaborations would not only mean sharing work but also sharing results with others. Mainstreaming also led to discussions on upscaling, that is, shifting from projects to programmes, and to broader regional, sub-regional and systemic aspects of biodiversity conservation.

The second contextual change came through the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (revised in Accra in 2008). Essentially this international agreement sought a restructuring of the aid architecture and a reprioritisation of goals and actors. It advocated for developing countries to determine their own development priorities and for donor countries to align with these. ODA funding would therefore flow through recipient countries’ national systems and local mechanisms. This threatened to bypass WWF NOs and would rapidly exclude many external NGOs, such as WWF POs, that did not have full legal status or accountability to local national governance, thus excluding them from international aid, WWF’s traditional source of financing (Discussion Paper on Eligibility to PSP Funding 2012). In retrospect, this threat did not materialise financially for WWF, and the eligibility of POs for ODA from the EU has only occasionally been an issue. However, it significantly influenced the composition of PSP and the positioning of WWF POs, as discussed below.

The third contextual change was the rise of funding from emerging economies and the idea of economic convergence i.e. that economic growth in developing countries was catching up with developed countries (Andrey and Julia 2014; Islam 2003). This meant that WWF’s Programme Offices and other projects, especially in Brazil, China, Russia and India, were now located in countries with the potential to change from recipients to donors, albeit under new funding rules and greater emphasis on economic development (WWF 2014).

Together with diminishing ODA funds, these changes influenced both WWF’s public finance network composition and switching tactics. First, some of WWF’s Programme offices located in developing countries, and particularly those located in BRIC countries or graduated low middle income economies, increasingly became important nodes in the internal networks with some being promoted to National Office status, for example WWF-Kenya. These countries were connected to PSP by PSP coordinators (previously GAA coordinators) who worked as liaison persons between the PO field offices and the donating NOs, or local government and aid agency donors. The new PSP strategy brought about a significant strategic change in direction, from soliciting donors to influencing recipient countries who in turn would influence donors.

Second, these changes caused a realignment of switchers within WWF and a forging of new multi-sector partnerships with conservation and development partners. In the words of a WWF staff member, it was about engaging “with policy makers outside the conservation/environment ghetto”, particularly with decision makers such as Heads of State, Prime Ministers’ offices, Ministries of Finance and Planning. WWF also sought strategic engagement with networks from at least four main domains: international development (not limited to environment), climate change, ‘security’-based issues (such as stability, risk management, food, water, natural resources, ecosystem services) and emerging economies. The following two examples illustrate new connections of WWF within and outside of conservation networks.

Within conservation networks, WWF positioned itself strategically by becoming one of the 18 GEF agencies, which include regional and multilateral development banks and UN Agencies (e.g. UNDP, UNEP). WWF has a long history of working with GEF, having been actively involved in the negotiations leading to its establishment in 1992 and participating in more than 100 GEF programmes and projects thereafter. This new position of WWF as a GEF Agency was the result of years of lobbying by both WWF-US and WWF International offices, to allow NGOs to be included as agencies. The new NGO agencies would be specifically referred to as GEF Project Agencies. On behalf of WWF, WWF-US became the first GEF Project Agency. It created a GEF Agency Management Unit that worked with and coordinated other WWF offices on GEF projects. For WWF, being a GEF Agency meant at least three new things: (1) WWF would have direct access to GEF funds, (2) it would work directly with governments and international bodies to co-design and implement GEF projects that are in line with national strategies and (3) it could create larger WWF programmes encompassing several countries. In WWF’s words it meant “our ability to connect partners at all levels and effect global change has increased dramatically” (WWF US 2014, p. 5). Besides being a GEF Agency, WWF also began to work more closely with other GEF Implementing agencies, for example, by positioning a WWF team within Asian Development Bank’s headquarters in Manila.

The second example is about WWF’s new networks related to climate change. Within WWF it was felt that climate change was overriding environment and that it was imperative to be strongly positioned in climate change networks. In 2015, WWF’s Network Executive Team (NET) decided that WWF should seek accreditation as an International Implementing Entity of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in the same manner that the organisation had acquired GEF Agency status. GCF is a financial mechanism established under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to counter climate change in developing countries. Its Accredited Entities “carry out a range of activities that usually include the development of funding proposals and the management and monitoring of projects and programmes” that deal with climate change adaption and mitigation (UNFCCC website). They also act as conduits through which GCF channels resources. WWF-US applied and in 2016 was approved as an Accredited Entity (AE) of the GCF on behalf of WWF. A WWF-wide GCF Steering Committee was established by the NET initially with 8 members representing the offices in Asia, Africa, US, Korea, Latin America, Europe, the International Office and a staff member working on Climate Change. This was an interim team because WWF was undergoing network reorganisations at that time. South Korea was included in the membership because the GCF headquarters is located near Seoul. The NET strongly recommended that the team be chaired by a representative from a developing country. GCF funds are accessible through multiple entities simultaneously and WWF offices were free to request funding from other GCF Accredited Entities so long as they kept the WWF-GCF Steering Committee informed. The WWF-GCF and WWF-GEF Steering Committees hold joint meetings, including sharing online platforms.

To summarise, PSP became more outward looking as WWF realised that influencing and accessing the main (multilateral) funding agencies would be more effective than targeting bilateral aid channels only. It’s programme changed in three significant ways. First, WWF increasingly aimed at increasing income for global conservation instead of only seeking its own income. Second, it not only targeted ministries of environment but all of government through powerful ministries that control budgets and policy. Third, WWF was seeking large scale projects and programmes and discouraging the acquisition of small funds. At the same time WWF strategically positioned itself as a significant switcher both within and outside conservation networks and thereby building its influence on global conservation financing.

Since its inception WWF has worked with corporate sector players. For example, in the 1970s it created the Club of 1001 to build a US$10 million fund, in the 1980s it was actively involved with the corporate sector in promoting the Sustainable Development discourse and during both Earth Summits in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and 10 years later in Johannesburg it was also an active participant in establishing private sector engagement (MacDonald 2010a). However, it was only from 2010 that PSP begun to structurally engage with private sector financing. In 2014, the PSP strategy was reformulated and its strategic goal emphasised using public funds to influence and leverage finance, including private finance.

A major trigger for this new engagement was the emergence of new actors and the dwindling of traditional ones. On the one hand, BRIC and graduated low middle income countries were rising up as new actors and potential financiers of environmental conservation. New bilaterals would include countries such as Azerbaijan, Brazil, China, India, Korea, Kuwait, Singapore and South Africa and new multilaterals were ASEAN+ 3 bank, BRICS bank, and the Eurasian Development Bank. The dominant discourse within this new group of players was economic growth, with a special focus on infrastructural development. As such, private sector businesses were key partners. On the other hand, traditional public financing through ODA was decreasing particularly following the 2008/2009 financial crisis. In many developing countries foreign direct investment surpassed international aid. At the same time the graduation of poor countries to low middle income status made them ineligible for aid.

There was also direct pressure from some of WWF’s partners. For example the French Development Agency challenged WWF to start working with loans as a complement to grants and together WWF and the agency piloted a subsidised loan to promote green tourism in Thailand (Workshop at Focal Points Forum 2010). Donors, for example the Swedish aid agency SIDA, found partnerships with businesses to be very interesting and supported such partnerships with substantial funding. In addition, peer conservation organisations that worked complementarily or competitively with WWF were establishing green investment funds, for example, ‘Verde Venture’ by Conservation International, ‘NatureVest’ by The Nature Conservancy and ‘New Venture’ by the World Resource Institute.

The wish to engage with the private sector was occurring more broadly. During this period Millennium Development Goals transitioned into Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDSs are broader in terms of goals, scope and actors. Implementation is taking a more business-like orientation as seen in platforms such as the UN Global Compact and Impact2030. The UN was seeking government support in enhancing the role of the private sector. In 2010 the World Economic Forum had come up with a report titled, ‘Global Redesign’ which looked beyond public–private partnerships to a ‘plurilateral Club of clubs’ of multinational corporations, nation states and select NGOs. WWF was seen as an important actor in these discussions. For example, through WWF-France, WWF became a member of the advisory board of the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Fund at the request of its initiators UNCCD (The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) and Mirova, “a Natixis Asset Management subsidiary dedicated to responsible investment” (Mirova website). WWF’s role in LDN also included project sourcing, “in particular through active engagement with private sector project sponsors and developers in France and, at a later stage, overseas” (WWF intranet). WWF-France together with WWF’s Landscape Finance Lab (a network-wide forum) identified several ‘bankable projects’. In its position as a GEF Agency, WWF-US secured a US$2 m Grant from GEF to contribute to LDN Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) (WWF intranet).

The internal WWF PSP network begun to deliberately forge linkages to WWF’s Private Finance Sector Initiative (PFSI). PSFI was another of the five policy drivers established within WWF to address environmental impact (both positive and negative) from the private sector (similar to PSP for public finance). In 2014 PSFI joined the PSP global meeting in Paris. An objective of the meeting was “to understand how WWF [was] moving towards an overarching ‘financing as a driver’ approach” (PSP intranet). In addition, external speakers to the PSP Global Forums also increasingly included private sector experts, especially from the financial sector. However, discussions on merging PSP and PSFI did not materialise. Although there were points of convergence, it was felt that each had distinctive attributes and requirements that still required targeted efforts and specialisation.

There were also marked efforts at leveraging private finance using public finance. PSP found the public sector crucial in influencing private sector financing. As mentioned during the PSP 2014 Focal Points meeting, “Public sector sets the bar… and private sector will likely end up following” (PSP intranet). To attract more private funds, several fora were founded: the Landscape Finance Lab, Project Finance for Permanence, Green Public Funds team, Green Bonds Task Force, Sustainable Finance Programme, Green Finance and Natural Capital Projects, Financial Institution for the Recovery of Marine Ecosystems (FIRME). For example, the ongoing Landscape Finance Lab’s goal was to “test and refine models for combining private commercial finance and impact investment with public finance for sustainable development and climate”. FIRME was set up to “provide an innovative strategy to harness new forms of private and public finance to support and help achieve WWFs global marine conservation objectives of healthy oceans and human wellbeing” (FIRME Strategy Session 2014). Through its intranet, WWF provided online courses to train staff on private finance, including the course, “Making the Finance Sector Work for you”.

Consequently, WWF further developed a business discourse and increasingly used terms such as ‘green growth’, ‘natural capital’ and ‘ecosystem services’. For example, natural capital became a key concept of WWF’s Living Planet Report, as explained in the Forward of the 2014 Living Planet Report by WWF’s International Director General: “While it may be an economic metaphor, it encapsulates the idea that our economic prosperity and our well-being are reliant upon the resources provided by a healthy planet”. WWF was now saving “the world’s most ecologically, economically and culturally important species” (WWF US 2014, p. 33). PSP staff was further encouraged to adopt business-like, development/SDG jargon by speaking beyond environmental considerations—which was discussed as insufficient for changing investor behaviour—to emphasise opportunities rather than just risks.

However, PSP faced the challenge of embracing businesses while also chiding business-as-usual, and in this role saw itself as a ‘critical friend’. As explained by a senior staff member,

…a lot of money flows into economic activities and sectors that we don’t like because they contribute to the destruction of the planet…some [business] players…could be our friends [and]…help us bring about the change we want to see happen…but we will have enemies and it won’t be an easy task. We will be facing fierce resistance from some players who will see our efforts as a threat to their business (Opening speech PSP Forum 2014).

PSP therefore sought friendship with former enemies, for example with Export Credit Agencies (ECAs), which it had previously accused of covering human rights abuses, environmental degradation and causes of indebtedness of developing countries (WWF et al. 2000). ECAs are public or private organisations that facilitate exports from developed to developing countries by providing loans, insurance and guarantees to domestic exporters from their home countries. Today they collectively finance more private-sector projects in developing countries than the World Bank, the total bilateral and multilateral development aid or any other institution (ECA Watch website).

To sum up to attract private finance, PSP further opened up its networks and engaged in new territories where it had less capacity and experience and therefore was more susceptible to external programming. WWF’s goal was to transform business-as-usual into sustainable businesses, while at the same time using public finance to leverage private finance. It increasingly adapted itself towards the appropriate business discourse, worked at converting former enemies into friends, and formed internal networks to create ‘bankable projects’ and opportunities that would be attractive for businesses.