GWP NEWSLETTER | JANUARY 2020
Dear GWP Friends and Colleagues,

We wish you a very happy new year and hope that 2020—referred to as the "biodiversity super year"—brings to the forefront the urgency of combating illegal wildlife trade and saving our threatened species as key international meetings are planned to set the tone and agenda for environmental action.
As we look back at 2019, we are deeply saddened and still shocked by the loss of our friend, mentor and program leader Claudia Sobrevila who unexpectedly passed away on July 31, 2019. Claudia brought light, joy and passion to wildlife conservation, she championed communities and indigenous people’s rights, she fought hard to be optimistic in a world that’s filled with negativity, and she triumphed in every task that she took on. Claudia believed that by increasing societies’ understanding of the need to care for and nurture the environment we create a powerful movement toward peace.

Please watch this video where Claudia's vision is captured through her own words , and explore this special book where friends and colleagues shared their thoughts, commemorating her life. She is dearly missed every day, but we are committed to honor her legacy through the implementation of our projects and with the utmost respect for nature, wildlife, and the indigenous communities.
Claudia's absence was felt as we wrapped up last year with the GWP's third annual conference in Pretoria and Kruger National Park in South Africa  where the GWP partnered with the government of South Africa to bring together over 100 practitioners to discuss the opportunities and challenges related to investing in a wildlife-based economy. We are thankful to the project team of South Africa for their hospitality. You can view the agenda here.
We continue to build our partnerships, and i n our Partners at Work section below we highlight the UNDP-led maritime trafficking grant activities and training workshops as well as a workshop led by the ADB and the government of the Philippines on wildlife and forest crimes indicators held in the Philippines along with a seminar on machine learning to track online illegal wildlife trade in the country.

As the team prepares for the second phase of the GWP, we would like to emphasize that your comments and feedback on our program’s activities are always welcome. Please reach out to us here .
 
Wishing you all a wonderful start to the new year and much success in your endeavors throughout the coming year,

The GWP Team
GWP featured at the GEF's Civil Society Consultation Meeting on Combatting Illegal Wildlife Trade
Ahead of the 57th Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council meeting in Washington, D.C., civil society organization (CSO) leaders, GEF council members, and other stakeholders met on December 16, 2019, to discuss the threats posed by illegal wildlife trade (IWT) and possible solutions. The event was organized in collaboration with the GWP, the GEF-CSO Network , the GEF Small Grants Programme , and the Indigenous Peoples Advisory Group . Statistics from the GWP's recent report on the cost of IWT were highlighted by TRAFFIC Executive Director Steve Broad during his presentation.
Throughout the week posters about the GWP lit up the World Bank atrium with information on how the program is working to reduce poaching, trafficking, and demand across three continents. In addition, GWP videos were screened on the atrium's jumbotron, which drew a wide audience from within the World Bank and from meeting participants.
Donor Coordination
GWP donor roundtable discussion at CITES COP18
At the 18th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora ( CITES CoP18 ) held mid-August in Geneva, Switzerland, the GWP held a donor roundtable to present our IWT donor coordination activities , including the donor engagement platform, data exchange, case studies to capture data and assess investment outputs/outcomes, and periodic meetings to take stock on initiatives, funding programs, and upcoming events. Recommendations and next steps were also presented.
Our roundtable panel included :
  • Jürgen Friedrich, Policy Officer, International Environmental Issues, German Ministry for the Environment
  • Dr. Cheryl Case, Deputy Director, United Kingdom DEFRA
  • Jorge Rodriguez-Romero, Deputy Head of Unit, DG Environment, European Commission
  • Pamela Scruggs, Chief, Division of Management Authority, USFWS
  • Andy Tobiason, Biodiversity Conservation Advisor, USAID
  • Rebecca Ng, Program Officer, Vulcan Inc.
  • Ivonne Higuero, Secretary General, CITES
How are donor funds being used to combat IWT?
In August 2019, we updated our Analysis of International Funding to Combat Illegal Wildlife Trade with new data in this interactive e-Book and added a deep dive into successful case studies in order to facilitate learning from those projects.
With funding from Germany, we also created " story maps " with vivid photos, videos and maps that take you inside 10 donor projects.

* Use the "filter by" function to narrow down results by donor, geography, type of product (case studies/story maps) and intervention category.

Please let us know your thoughts on these products.
Latest Publications
The real costs of illegal logging, fishing and wildlife trade: $1 trillion–$2 trillion per year
This new report from the GWP tallies the annual cost of these illegal activities at a staggering $1 trillion to $2 trillion. More than 90 percent of these losses are from ecosystem services that forests, wildlife and coastal resources provide that are not currently priced by the market, such as carbon storage, biodiversity, water filtration, and flood retention.

Greater investments and strong political commitment are needed to address the systemic corruption and weak governance across the public and private sectors that enable this illegal trade. The report provides a road map to help countries strengthen their capacity to address these crimes and elevate efforts to protect their natural resources.

Benoît Blarel, World Bank Practice Manager for Global Platforms, Environment, Natural Resources & Blue Economy, authored a blog that discusses the report's findings and why it's crucial to work together to fight these illegal activities and document the true value of natural resources through natural capital accounting.
When Good Conservation Becomes Good Economics: Kenya's Vanishing Herds
Wildlife, the principal asset of Kenya’s tourism industry, is in rapid decline. In the past three decades, the country has lost nearly 70% of its wildlife.

The evidence presented in this report, produced with support from the GWP, the GEF and the World Bank, suggests there are wide opportunities to stop the dramatic collapse of wildlife populations and that investing in the tourism sector yields significant benefits which are especially pro-poor. The most pressing need is for planners to incorporate the tools in this report and elsewhere to consider the long-term implications of irreversible decisions and harness the full potential the country’s natural endowment offers.
GWP Partners at Work
UNDP-led maritime trafficking grant activities and training workshops
Financed by the GEF and implemented by the UNDP between 2018 and 2021, the Reducing Maritime Trafficking of Wildlife between Africa and Asia project under the GWP aims to curb maritime wildlife trafficking, targeting key routes and transit points between Africa and Asia. 
In July 2019, a port stakeholder workshop on Countering Wildlife Trafficking Through Tanzania’s Seaports was conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, attended by 57 participations.

A follow up workshop was conducted in Mombasa, Kenya, from October 23-25, 2019 with 75 participants. Additionally, a Program Coordination Unit has been established in Zanzibar in partnership with UNODC-WCO Container Control Programme (CCP) , and a certified course for port-based stakeholders (Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers) is under development and cargo targeting/risk assessment systems are being piloted. 
The GWP Philippines’ illegal wildlife trade project
IN FOCUS : The Asian Development Bank (ADB)/GEF-DENR project on Combating Environmental Organized Crime in the Philippines
Workshop on Wildlife and Forest Crimes Indicators
Are our institutions ready to respond to wildlife and forest crimes? This is the key question law enforcement agents and legal practitioners sought to answer during a two-day workshop attended by more than 60 participants from national and regional agencies, organized by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB), with support from the UNODC and the GWP Philippines project.

Held October 17-18, 2019, in Quezon City, the “Orientation-Workshop on the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) Wildlife and Forest Crimes Indicator Framework ” aimed to measure the effectiveness of the country’s preventive and criminal justice responses to illegal wildlife trade—an increasingly organized and sophisticated crime involving large numbers of wildlife led by syndicates within and outside the Philippines. 

The results of the assessment are expected to help enhance the Wildlife Law Enforcement Action Plan (WildLEAP), the country’s roadmap for a strengthened, sustained, and well-coordinated program on wildlife law enforcement, and provide valuable inputs to the National Environmental Law Enforcement or NELE Summit scheduled in March 2020.
Seminar on machine learning to track online illegal wildlife trade
As the trade of illegal wildlife continues to migrate to social media and to other digital platforms, enforcement agencies will need to adapt to address the continuing proliferation of cybercrime. The good news is that social media provides a wealth of data that is easily accessible, and with the right tools and know-how, it can allow enforcement agents to track illegal wildlife crimes and other activities that will help the wildlife conservation efforts of the country. 

The GWP Philippines project organized a seminar on “Environmental Conservation in the Digital Age” for representatives of member-agencies of the National Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee- Sub-committee on Environment and Natural Resources and more than 150 students from De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila University on November 26–27, 2019. Dr. Enrico di Minin, an Adjunct Professor from the University of Helsinki and one of the leading experts in the world in using social media for environmental conservation spoke at the event. The success of the seminars indicated there is a further need for more workshops and trainings with regards to cybercrime in the Philippines.
Replay GWP's Virtual Knowledge Events
NEW! You can now replay over 20 GWP webinars on our website here !
Our latest knowledge events:

November 2019:

October 2019:

September 2019:
To receive regular updates about virtual events, please email:
Other Resources
Economic Impact of Global Wildlife Tourism: 
Travel & Tourism as an Economic Tool for the Protection of Wildlife
While the travel and tourism sector accounts for 10.4% of global GDP, wildlife tourism
represents 3.9% of this figure, or nearly $344 billion—equivalent to the entire GDP of South Africa or Hong Kong. Travel and tourism can play a tremendous role in combating illegal trade in wildlife—wildlife tourism represents over five times the value of the illegal wildlife trade.

This report by the World Travel & Tourism Council provides an estimate of the global economic contribution of wildlife tourism, quantifying the importance of wildlife tourism to build greater awareness of its value and showcase the need for protection among policymakers and government budget holders.
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