The World Widelife Fund (WWF), the former name of the World Wide Fund for Nature, was officially created on 29 April 1961, when a small group of environmentalists signed a declaration, that came to be known as the Morges Manifesto, with the mission to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature. The fund set up shop at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) headquarters in Morges, Switzerland, with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands becoming the organisation’s first president and a black-and-white panda – its logo.
The inspiration for the logo came from a real panda, from the giant female panda Chi-Chi (caught in 1955 in Sichuan, China, moved to Moscow Zoo and back to China and forth to Moscow, to the East Berlin, Frankfurt and Copenhagen Zoos), property of the London Zoo at the time.
Chi-Chi was an inspiration for Sir Peter Scott’s simple but distinctive logo, which he described in the following way: “We wanted an animal that is beautiful, is endangered, and one loved by many people in the world for its appealing qualities. We also wanted an animal that had an impact in black and white to save money on printing costs.”
The simple logo and intention laid the foundations of what is today the largest independent conservation organisation – with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries on conserving the world’s biological diversity, ensuring the sustainable usage of renewable natural resources and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.
The funding of the WWF started with The 1001: A Nature Trust, established in 1970, with each of the 1001 members contributing $10,000 to the trust. And today, the Fund is still mainly funded by individuals’ contributions, yet nowadays, government sources, such as the World Bank, provide nearly 20% of the funding, with additional almost 10% coming from corporations. One of the most prominent tools to finance the protection of our environment is the so-called “debt for nature swap”, an innovative financing for sustainable development where portions of foreign debts are forgiven in exchange for local investments in environmental conservation measures.
Currently, WWF runs numerous initiatives focused on six major goals – forests, oceans, wildlife, food, climate and energy, and freshwater; and three key drivers of environmental problems – markets (“transforming international markets so goods and services are produced and consumed more sustainably to cope with the entry of 2-3 billion new middle-class consumers over the next 30 years”), finance (“moving away from financial systems that favour short-term returns over long-term wealth creation that supports inclusive development and protection of natural assets”), and governance (“tackling the inequitable global governance system where the vast majority of people affected by environmental change remain voiceless and unable to influence change”).
And while the power of the individual voice might be limited, the collective voice is to be heard, and together, we can protect our planet by embracing a more sustainable life and by supporting the work of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
