Government & Aid Agency (GAA) Funding

WWF working closely with multilateral and bilateral agencies

In the middle of the 20th century the most industrialized countries began to provide financial aid for the development of the world's poorest nations.

However, this aid often was poorly planned or executed in terms of its impact on the environment and biodiversity: the 2 elements essential to the well-being of many of the planet's poorest people.

Reorient towards sustainable development
In the late 20th century many aid bodies, under considerable pressure from outside organizations, began to reorient their development aid strategies towards sustainable development by integrating social and environment underpinnings.

As this evolution took place, WWF chose to work increasingly closely with multilateral and bilateral agencies on a wide range of issues relating to the environment and sustainable development.

Partnering with development cooperation agencies
With strong roots in Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), WWF decided to partner with 'development cooperation' agencies on projects which could demonstrate new ways of achieving environmentally sustainable development and/or change government policies to improve environmental sustainability. Joint activities now extend into an array of issues such as:

• development of institutional capacity of national partner agencies and NGOs,
• strenghtening civil society organizations participation in environmental governance and policy development, and
• looking at the impact of trade liberalization on biodiversity and environmental sustainability.

22% of WWF's global income comes from Aid Agencies
WWF's partnerships with Governments and Aid Agencies have grown to encompass almost all of the bilateral development cooperation agencies of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and most of the multilateral Development Agencies and Banks.

They cover a range of partnership models from cooperative agreements for co-financing of projects, to strategic alliances with targets for joint programmatic achievement, and they include a variety of methodologies such as programme support, learning roundtables and staff exchanges and secondments.

About 22% of WWF's global income comes from Governments and Aid Agencies, enhancing investments made by WWF from its other sources, primarily member and supporter donations.

WWF carefully assesses its partnerships for the contribution they make to WWFs Mission and Global Prioirities, while also looking at how they contribute to the goals of the international community, particularly as reflected in 2 of the Millennium Development Goals: the reversal of environmental degradation, and the establishment of a global partnership for sustainable development.