Safeguards and Principles

WWF-India has been working in India for over 50 years. We are working on nature conservation in ecologically important areas, which are also home to many tribal and local communities. We firmly believe that conservation of nature can only be achieved in partnership with tribal and local communities and other stakeholders. Nature’s free services and healthy ecosystems are critical for people’s lives, livelihoods and well-being.

It is, thus, essential that we understand how our activities affect the relationship between local communities and the places they depend on/reside in. It allows us to identify, avoid and mitigate any adverse environmental and social impacts of our work, and most importantly, enables us to focus on the needs and aspirations of local people as a foundation on which our conservation programmes are built. WWF as a network has developed an Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework  and Statements of Principles, which is implemented across all offices. The Statements of Principles (SOPs) encapsulate our commitments to respect and promote human rights, foster gender equality and uphold the rights of tribal and local communities. The Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework (ESSF), which includes nine Safeguards, supports the Principles by helping us to live up to our social and human rights commitments in relation to our place-based work. The SOPs apply to all of WWF’s work. For situations where WWF engages in conservation on the ground, including activities implemented through partners, the ESSF is applied.

As a responsible and accountable organization, WWF-India is implementing the ESSF and SOPs requirements effectively in all of our work, especially place-based activities.

For more details, please visit https://wwf.panda.org/principles_and_safeguards/