WWF has chosen its conservation priorities by first identifying three biomes for biodiversity conservation - forests, freshwater ecosystems, and oceans/coasts - and then translating this priority focus into field-based, policy, and campaign activities.
To give the priority biomes geographic focus - that is, to identify which of the world's forests, freshwater ecosystems, and marine areas WWF should concentrate its conservation resources on - WWF will use the Global 200 Ecoregions.
By focusing the conservation activities of WWF's regional programmes on selected, globally outstanding areas identified in the Global 200 analysis, WWF can ensure that its investment in the biomes (and in a few cases outside them) is in places that are most important from a global perspective. In this way, each of WWF's regional programmes can contribute directly to the overall global conservation strategy. Through ecoregional conservation strategies we can also ensure that our activities (e.g. promoting protected areas and sustainable resource use, and building local conservation capacity) converge in more intensive, integrated efforts to conserve the selected ecoregions. National conservation activities outside Global 200 ecoregions will emphasize the priority biomes.
The WWF Network will strive to focus at least 80 per cent of its total conservation spending on the agreed conservation priorities, i.e. the three biomes and six conservation methods (described later). The conservation programmes will be measured regularly against this criterion at a global level by WWF's Programme Committee. All activities falling outside the 80 per cent global priority focus must further conservation and correspond to the wider Mission goals.