The power of partnerships

The conservation organisation, therefore, forges partnerships with business and industry that lead to real action towards adopting and promoting best practice in environmental behaviour.

The opportunities for WWF to work with business and industry to mutual advantage are plentiful; because in an increasingly competitive world, consumers expect companies to demonstrate corporate responsibility towards the environment.

Companies associate with the WWF as its Corporate Club members, Conservation Partners, Corporate Supporters, and in Product Licensing Partnerships. Such relationships have yielded positive results in ways such as contributing to fighting global warming, moving to renewable energy systems, adopting clean technologies, phasing out chemicals, ensuring sustainable resource use or saving endangered species and habitats…

WWF's Corporate Club in the UAE offers companies ways to demonstrate that they care about the country's natural environmental heritage by joining in an annual membership programme. These companies support WWF financially and in-kind, opening up opportunities to save threatened species such as Arabian oryx and habitats such as coral reefs.

AME Info, Dolphin Energy, Choithram, Ford, DHL, Sony, Canon, ABB, Hewlett Packard, Khaleej Times and Abu Dhabi Duty Free are among members of the WWF Corporate Club in the UAE. In other countries too - China, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Thailand - similar Corporate Club memberships contribute to WWF's conservation work in those nations.

WWF's Conservation Partners are a select group of companies with which the conservation organisation works on areas of common concern such as improved environmental standards within the partners' own businesses. Some also contribute major funding to WWF's global conservation work.

Under a partnership with WWF, Lafarge (world leader in building materials) has made a major commitment to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010 - roughly twice the commitment made by industrialized countries under the Kyoto climate treaty.

The company has also adopted strict guidelines for the rehabilitation of its quarries and is looking to improve energy efficiency across all its plants by reducing the use of fossil fuels.

The creation and placing of advertisements is crucial to WWF campaigns. As a Conservation Partner, leading advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather, provides WWF with free creative work and negotiates with MindShare for pro bono placements worth several million US dollars per year in major international media.

Another Conservation Partnership with Canon is helping WWF to digitize its superb collection of nature photographs, making it readily available online to its offices worldwide. Canon has put environmental issues at the heart of its vision for the 21st century.

Having created the world's first system for recycling used toner cartridges in 1990, the company continues to develop innovative products that not only conserve energy and resources but also eliminate hazardous substances.

A partnership with HSBC, one of the world's biggest banks, is helping WWF restore river basin habitats in the Amazon (Brazil), Yangtze (China) and Rio Grande (USA) by returning rivers to their natural flow, protecting fish and other species, and securing fresh drinking water for millions.

Corporate Supporters are companies committed to environmentally friendly work related practices that also contribute finances or gifts-in-kind to further WWF's work. The market research group INRA Europe, for instance, is one that provides free market research into the European public's perception of environmental issues and of WWF and its brand.

The information provided by these surveys helps the organisation to better shape its messages. A 1999 survey by INRA in nine European countries showed that a majority of respondents thought an association with WWF added value to a company.

Delverde, the Italian pasta manufacturer, is a WWF Corporate Supporter that has always taken an active role in nature conservation and is now increasing its range of organic products, as well as helping protect a nature park in Italy.

There are product licensing partnerships with companies that have a proven track record of corporate environmental responsibility and whose products are manufactured using environmentally friendly practices and materials.

International Bon Ton Toys is one that has designed a collection of plush toy animals especially for WWF. The company complies with WWF's rigorous environmental standards by using carefully sourced materials to make its toys, which are sold throughout the world.

WWF thus enters into business and industry relationships with a positive and constructive mindset, searching for solutions, which take the organization further along the road to halting the degradation of nature.