Our 360°approach to rainforest conservation

The Challenge

Indigenous and local rainforest communities are often excluded from decision making about their lands, rights, and futures in spite of the serious and constant threats to their territories and livelihoods. Lack of access to educational and training opportunities create significant gaps in communities’ capacities to implement conservation initiatives, build economic livelihoods, advocate for their communities, organize against threats, and more.

Our Solutions

Protecting forests starts with empowered rainforest communities.

Through training, capacity building programs, technical support, infrastructure, and educational opportunities, our community partners gain skills, knowledge, and tools to lead projects on their own, empowering them to be in control of the future of their communities and forests.

Whether it be managing a community-owned protected area, organizing to prevent deforestation and exploitation on their land, or promoting regenerative agriculture as an economic livelihood, community leadership and ownership of the projects is the key to making our conservation impact last.

Our projects are designed with local partners and are reflective of their own goals and visions for the future. Our role as partner is to contribute our institutional knowledge, resources, connections, and support, joining our expertise with our partners’ in a powerful act of collaboration and equal partnership.  

Creating Long Term Impact

Community engagement and empowerment is central to our community-based projects; this integral piece of our strategy ensures these long term results:

- Community members and organizations can independently teach others, expand projects, or create new ones without needing external support

- Long term successful implementation of conservation and management plans

- Because projects are led by local people and compatible with local practices and cultures, the conservation impact is long lasting and advance communities’ visions for their futures

‍

The Challenge

Without robust research and data, conservation policies and management are weak and inefficient; science and research can be powerful tools to advocate for and implement forest and biodiversity conservation.

In many forested regions, there is very little to no available research and information about local ecosystems or wildlife, making science-based policy decisions difficult.

Our Solutions

We use scientific research to inform  effective conservation.

With the help of partners, we perform biodiversity assessments, publish academic research papers, and create data-backed action plans to support conservation policy grounded in research. In regions with little to no available research information, we establish foundational data and encourage future research. This research informs conservation plans and fosters deeper connections between forest landscapes and the people living there.

For example, we've studied and led scientific expeditions to explore, understand and record the unique biodiversity in the Cordillera de Colan and other parts of the Tropical Andes, focusing on threatened amphibians and reptiles.

Our biodiversity research team has discovered numerous species new to western science, including 10 potential new species discoveries in 2022 alone!

Creating Long Term Impact

Simply put, conducting conservation research leads to:

-Improved conservation of endangered and key species 

-Strategic conservation policies and effective implementation

-Effective long term management of protected areas

-Successful restoration of deforested areas and healthy ecosystems

The Challenge

Deforestation and biodiversity loss are caused by cattle ranching, agriculture, oil, mining, urbanization, forest fires, and more. Habitat fragmentation and degradation, water pollution, and unsustainable resource management threaten and endanger thousands of species; huge areas of forest are cut down every day.

Our Solutions

In collaboration with local and indigenous communities, we lead a diverse range of conservation, restoration, and biodiversity management programs that conserve forests, restore degraded forest, and protect the many endangered and vulnerable species that live within these them-- from Andean spectacled bears, frogs and butterflies to the immense diversity of bird, amphibian, insect, and plant life that live across the Amazon and Tropical Andes biodiversity hotspots.

Many projects also include restoration and regeneration of degraded forest landscapes, land and resource management plans, monitoring and more.

Creating Long Term Impact

This prong is often what people imagine:
- Sustainable management of forest ecosystems

-Long term successful management and protection of local and regional biodiversity

-Protection of endangered species

- Ecological stability and community resilience 

- More tropical forest available to act as critical carbon sinks

The Challenge

Local, regional, and national conservation policy and management plans for protected areas are critical to the long-term protection of forests and biodiversity. But implementation of those policies is equally important and can be challenging when training is inaccessible to many government offices and organizations leading implementation on the ground.

Local and regional governments and organizations often need support to expand their conservation knowledge, skills, and resources, to effectively implement their policies and plans. Many local and indigenous communities also lack legal rights to their lands making conservation, restoration, and management difficult.

Our Solutions

We work closely with governments at all levels, organizations, and conservation areas to support their work crafting effective conservation policy, creating and implementing land and resource plans, and collaborating with communities and organizations to conserve and restore forests.

We maintain strong relationships with our partners and support them with capacity building workshops, courses, and resources to ensure successful and long term implementation of these policies and plans.

For example, we are working with the University of Florida and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador to train park rangers across Ecuador in biodiversity monitoring and environmental education, strengthening conservation of the country’s National Parks. We also have supported action plans for the conservation of endangered primates and worked with partners to establish and manage protected areas for conservation.

The long-term impact

Our relationships with our government and organizational partners is absolutely key and invaluable to the success of our joint conservation efforts; all of these long term impacts are possible because of their partnership and leadership:

- Long term and durable implementation of conservation plans and policies

- Empowered governments, local leaders, and organizations with increased capacity to lead long term conservation 

- Institutionalized land stewardship and conservation

-Increased government support and resources for conservation and communities

- Protected areas with maintained water sources, healthy ecosystems and habitats, protection of biodiversity, and sustained carbon sinks

The Challenge

While many live far from tropical rainforests, the global economy connects us all to the forest, no matter where we live. 

Global consumption of everything from oil to coffee, beef, palm oil and chocolate, are major causes of deforestation. Governments and companies around the world are major drivers of deforestation in the Amazon, for example, and the biodiversity loss and destruction of community lands that occurs in tandem.

At the same time, feelings of disconnection and powerlessness hold us back from our vision of a zero deforestation world with a balanced climate and thriving biodiversity.

Our Solutions

We tackle these global challenges by leading bold and creative global initiatives to energize, educate, mobilize, and connect people all around the world. Our programs raise awareness and engage a diverse range of audiences, from filmmakers to youth, from the private sector to governments, organizations, and individuals.

We are building a diverse and widespread coalition of rainforest partners working together to ensure a better future for forests and climate.

We tell stories and project hope into the world; with every film, event, and connection we make, we drive people to action, driving global movement towards our collective goal of a zero deforestation world.

- World Rainforest Day (WRD), launched by Rainforest Partnership in 2017 as an annual day, June 22nd, is celebrated to focus on the outsized role rainforests play on the planet’s well-being. We partner with organizations, private companies, and governments all over the world to drive the conversation around protecting tropical rainforests.

- Films for the Forest (F3) is an annual global filmmaking challenge that offers artists, NGOs, educators, and the general public a platform to engage and think about their shared responsibility to conserve the planet. Over the years, F3 has received film submissions spanning all seven continents.

- Gen Z for the Trees (Z4T), started in 2020, leverages the energy and power of youth activism to move towards their groundbreaking goal of net-zero deforestation by 2030.

Creating Long Term Impact

We target the root causes of deforestation from the top-down as well as from the ground up. We need all of us working together to tackle these global challenges.

We are building a diverse and widespread coalition of rainforest partners working together to ensure a better future for forests and climate.

We tell stories and project hope into the world. With every film, event, and connection we make, we drive people to action, driving global movement towards our collective goal of a Zero Deforestation World.