Effective conservation of biological diversity is dependent on a wide and diverse range of stakeholders acting collaboratively. For example, for ecoregion conservation to be successul, the formation of partnerships, of which WWF will only be one of many stakeholders, is required.

Today, large scale forces such as consumption, technology, investment and trade policies, corruption and limited capacity drive the threats facing conservation areas in the Pacific. Working independently, organisations cannot by themselves respond adequately to these pressures.

To address these problems coherently, it is necessary that interested and affected people cooperate. Sectors and institutions that may not be traditional partners must work together to achieve a common goal.

In the Pacific, consultation and stakeholder dialogue processes that build concensus and facilitate new partnerships are required in developing all stages of our Ecoregional Action Plans.

Working Partnerships in the Pacific

WWF has many working partnerships in the Pacific region. In 2001, WWF SPPO established its Conservation Partnership Programme (CPP). The aim is to enable specific long term partnership to develop from the many informal working relationships that WWF has in the Pacific. CPPs are formal institutional relationships, with Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) that set joint objectives towards shared vision and identifies actions that the institutions work on together. The arrangement provides for real sharing of resources to deliver one common vision utilizing complementary skills and capacity, giving rise in part to the desired 'scaling up' of efforts.

Some examples are : USP WWF collaboration with the University of the South Pacific (USP) has been ongiong since the 1990s. An MOU was formalised in 2003 whereby USP has identified providing research grants to postgrad students, taking USP undergradfs as WWF interns and focusing on collaborative researc programmes as common objectives.

Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) established a MOU in 2003, which covers the collaboration between the organisations to use this important market based tool to ensure sustainability in the aquarium export industry in the pacific.

MOUs with Govt: These Mous differ from the very important MOUs that we sign with Pacific Island governments for the countries we work in.

Capacity Building

Partnership-centered conservation activities depend on improving staff, partners and organisational systems and structures reflect WWF's growing committment to tackling conservation issues. WWF has developed a capacity framework supporting regional and ecoregional programmes that is targeted at building capacity both internally within WWF and externally with conservation partners.