WWF's Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework

Safeguards play a vital role in ensuring WWF’s mission is carried out with integrity. They guide how we engage and collaborate with local communities as we conserve nature together.

Safeguards provide a structured way to conduct systematic due diligence around potential social, human rights, and environmental harms, creating a framework for how to address these, and ensuring we remain accountable to our commitments. When applied appropriately, safeguards enable conservation efforts to deliver better outcomes for both people and nature.

WWF applies safeguards in the design, implementation, and monitoring of all our activities. Our enhanced Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework establishes a common set of standards, policies, planning, and implementation mechanisms, and compliance systems that govern how activities on the ground are carried out. This framework has been adopted by the entire WWF Network to ensure consistent, comprehensive application of safeguards across all that we do.

The Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework includes the following features:

• Safeguards screening to surface potential harms, including those related to community safety, access to natural resources, and Indigenous peoples.
• Sound actions to address risk through the development of mitigation plans, implementation measures, and oversight systems.
• Quality assurance and accountability to ensure appropriate risk management, including through the engagement of qualified safeguards experts.
• Community participation throughout project design, implementation, and monitoring. Grievance mechanisms will be set up for stakeholders to voice any project-related concerns they have, so action can be taken.
• An independent ombudsperson to serve as a means for mediation when disputes cannot be settled locally, and make recommendations on how WWF can better comply with its commitments.

Where reports of abuse relate to landscapes or to partners that have received our support, our practice is to investigate, engage communities, take appropriate actions, and press the government to take corrective measures.

WWF understands that lasting conservation and community development go hand-in-hand. People are at the heart of all we do. Through this safeguards framework, WWF is furthering our commitment to drive sustainable development, uphold human rights, and advance the social and economic well-being of people in the places where we operate around the world.