Latest On The Conservation Gateway

A well-managed and operational Conservation Gateway is in our future! Marketing, Conservation, and Science have partnered on a plan to rebuild the Gateway into the organization’s enterprise content management system (AEM), with a planned launch of a minimal viable product in early FY26. If you’re interested in learning more about the project, reach out to megan.sheehan@tnc.org for more info!

Within each Global Solution, our Global Priorities pursue specific strategies linked to our place-based work that achieve significant gains for nature and people-on-the-ground, in policy and corporate practices, and in building support for conservation. These Global Priorities represent the best opportunities for the Conservancy to make the greatest global impact for our mission in the years ahead and will be our highest priority for investment of our discretionary and global level resources.

Conservation Landscapes

As world population increases and as competition for food, water, energy and other resources escalates, development pressure on large and relatively intact natural areas will increase. Maintaining healthy and resilient natural ecosystems must be seen by governments, corporate leaders and local communities to be important for both people and nature.

We will lead comprehensive, integrated campaigns, in partnership with others, to conserve more than a dozen of the world’s most important landscapes for people and nature. We will aim for big gains in conservation of critical ecosystems and working lands in partnership with local communities. We will deploy our full toolkit including conservation “deal” expertise, our work with indigenous peoples and sustainable development strategies.

Initial places: China; Mongolia; Australia; Eastern Africa; Amazon; Patagonia; and in North America: Central Appalachian Mountains, Crown of the Continent, Everglades, Central Great Plains Grasslands, Hawaiian Islands Ecosystems, Longleaf Pine Forests, Mojave Desert Ecoregion, and North American Boreal Forest. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Conserving Critical Lands.


Climate and Hazard Risk Reduction

Natural solutions can help us prevent and manage impacts to human and natural communities at great risk from natural hazards (e.g., droughts, storm surge, and floods), further exacerbated by climate change.

The Nature Conservancy will focus its science, tools, and field projects initially on marine/coastal and freshwater vulnerability to harness strong experience/expertise and current opportunities.

Places associated with this priority include the Gulf of Mexico, coastal New England in the United States, the desert Southwest of the United States, the island nations of the Grenadine Bank, the Solomon Islands, and other threatened coastal and freshwater systems in Latin America, Africa and Asia. This priority provides solutions to address two global challenges: Reducing Impacts of Climate Change as well as Restoring Our Oceans.


Expanding Nature's Constituency

By all measures, the number of people who support or participate in nature conservation is small. Research, however, shows that growing segments of the world’s population are concerned about issues related to their natural environment—from water quality and security to the effects of air pollution and a changing climate. There is a tremendous need and opportunity to engage and unite people around the world to become more active supporters of and advocates for the conservation of nature.

To build that constituency, we will engage broad audiences in major markets both inside and outside the U.S., expand youth education programs to cultivate the next generation of conservationists, create mechanisms to expand and promote volunteerism, establish urban conservation initiatives and launch All Hands on Earth, a marketing campaign to unite people through their shared interests in nature and create opportunities for greater involvement and action. These efforts necessitate the cultivation of an enhanced cadre of partner institutions to bring new expertise and help shoulder the responsibility of an expanded scope of work.

Initial Places: United States; Australia; China/Hong Kong; Brazil. This priority provides solutions to that relate to all four global challenges.


Forests and Climate

The Nature Conservancy’s efforts are focused on implementing large-scale examples of sustainable economic development that promote job creation and opportunity, but with substantially lower impact on forest resources.

We will draw from these models to support a broader group of countries in building national programs and to dramatically expand the political commitment, funding, and effectiveness of forest conservation globally.

Places associated with this priority include Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and China. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Reducing Impacts of Climate Change.


Global Agriculture

The Nature Conservancy will implement a sustainable intensification approach, focusing on raising yields through a range of approaches, such as precision agriculture, best management practices and new technologies, while maintaining environmental quality.

The Conservancy is particularly concerned with hypoxia, where nutrient run-off is a key contributor to biodiversity loss, and to habitat conversion linked to agriculture, especially in the tropics. Conservation strategies will also consider yield and production increases, given agriculture’s central role to human well-being, especially in rural areas, and the need to double global food supply by 2100.

Key areas for this strategy are the Mississippi valley, the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake, the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, and China. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Conserving Critical Lands.


Great Rivers Partnership

Through the Great Rivers Partnership, The Nature Conservancy brings together diverse partners and builds experience and scientific knowledge through successful conservation projects that advance integrated river management strategies along some of the world’s most important rivers – from the Mississippi River to China’s Yangtze River and Colombia’s Magdalena River. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Securing Fresh Water.


Indigenous and Communal Conservation

Ocean Solutions

We are turning to the ocean more than ever for food, energy, jobs, new medicines and recreation. But even the sea has limits. We believe that oceans must be managed for multiple objectives and uses. By planning for conservation and development — not just protecting certain marine species or managing fishing quotas — we can conserve and restore the ocean, reduce conflicts and enable sustainable resource use and development. The Nature Conservancy is advancing integrated ocean management strategies in some of the world’s most important seascapes by bringing diverse partners together around the needs of fishing, recreation, energy and other important industries. Together, we are finding solutions for managing our busy seas while doing the least harm to marine life, protecting areas of the ocean from destruction and development, and restoring already degraded habitats. Places associated with this priority include the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of the United States, the Coral Triangle, Micronesia, Caribbean, the Gulf of California, and the Humboldt Current of Peru and Chile. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Restoring Our Oceans.

The Oceans Solution strategy is still under development but will advance the Ocean “Challenges” and other opportunities to establish Integrated Ocean Management at a large scale. This strategy will strive to sustain biodiversity, provide the full suite of ecosystem services upon which people depend, and accommodate new ocean uses in any seascape or large ocean area.

Major focus areas will include MPAs and MSP, while recognizing that additional strategies, including sustainable finance and protection/restoration of reefs and other critical coastal ecosystems, are also needed.


Securing Water

The Nature Conservancy is helping cities, agriculture and corporations understand where their water comes from and why conservation of their water resources is critical to a secure future for their citizens and customers. By helping these water users understand how they can make smart investments in protecting their water supplies, the Conservancy can help ensure that freshwater systems receive adequate protection and conservation. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Securing Fresh Water.


Smart Infrastructure and Development

The Nature Conservancy’s approach to Smart Infrastructure and Resource Development enables companies, governments and communities to make better decisions about where development could occur—and where it shouldn’t. Through science and planning methods, like Development by Design, we can provide a holistic way for looking at what development does to natural systems and the people and precious species that depend upon them. We are demonstrating how to mitigate and offset the impacts through our on-the-ground work and by building practices and policy support for this approach. The Conservancy is shaping the footprint of development across the world. Places associated with this priority include Mongolia, Colombia, Australia and the United States. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Conserving Critical Lands.


Sustainable Fisheries

The Nature Conservancy is partnering with fishermen, industry and local communities to design, test, and implement innovative management approaches and new business models that result in viable local fisheries, stable supplies of seafood and marine conservation. Key tactics we are deploying include: working with fishing associations to ensure access rights to fishing grounds, providing incentives for the use of selective and benign fishing gear, developing low-cost assessment methods for data-poor fisheries, and modernizing the use of fisheries data and information by fishermen. Places associated with this priority include the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of the United States, the Humboldt Current of Peru and Chile, Indonesia and the Gulf of California. This priority provides solutions to address the global challenge of Restoring Our Oceans.


Valuing Nature

The traditional conservation approaches of “buying” and “banning” cannot work at the scale necessary to matter as billions more people are added to the population with unmet human needs. The response of the conservation community has been a radical shift from protectionism to persuading—persuading people, business and governments that nature is a value proposition.

If the economic value of nature is recognized and quantified in a transparent, credible and consistent way, then public and private institutions will invest in protecting nature as a way of protecting valuable assets. We have four strategies to do this: Improving ecosystem valuation methods with the Natural Capital Project; incorporating the value of nature into business decisions with Dow and other corporate leaders; assembling data and practical evidence for the value of nature through NatureLab; and shaping public policies to spur investment in natural infrastructure through our Leaders Valuing Nature initiative with government leaders in key countries.

Initial Places: United States; Brazil; Colombia; China; Indonesia. This priority provides solutions to that relate to all global challenges.