To foster a culture of collaboration and innovation in the WWF network, we’re prototyping Slack as a platform that will help people across the organization work together in teams, share information and create space for informal dialogue and learning that leads to action.

For reference, we began using Slack months ago as a space for a team of “Pandapreneurs” to collaborate and work together across regions, internal teams and working groups. Since then, other internal teams have been added to due to expressed interest in joining, from Knowledge Management to Innovation Ventures, the Africa Energy group, etc. In the months ahead we’ll begin on-boarding teams who are interested in creating space for connecting and working together across distances in a more transparent way.

Check out these first-hand reflections from Steven To (Change Management Specialist with WWF Africa) on how he uses Slack to organize his work in teams and get things done while creating a culture of openness, trust and playfulness.

What makes Slack different from platforms like Yammer, and what value do you think it adds to the WWF Network?

• Steven: I think Slack brings a new way of collaboration to WWF Network. Email is sometimes too serious. Imagine Slack as a virtual pantry or coffee place where people come take a rest. It’s often these informal chats that give rise to great ideas and foster bonding and collaboration among teams

How do you use Slack to collaborate with teams and get work done?

• Steven: I have used Slack for a start-up I founded starting 3 years ago. There is a lead for each channel and we basically upload documents and discuss in each channel. We still have our work meetings but Slack becomes the way to communicate when we are not formally meeting.

What are the factors and conditions that lead to active engagement on a Slack channel?

• Steven: Needless to say, for a community to thrive, everyone needs to participate. Really think about it as a virtual pantry. Just go there for 5 minutes or so like you would go to Facebook when you want to “slack”. Do not make the platform too formal and serious. It’s supposed to be a fun place. So share more stuff that you won’t when you send emails — any news, magazine articles, funny pictures, inspirations etc.

What is your favourite feature on Slack?

• Steven: I like a #Random channel that my team created. We posted so much funny pictures there and shared lots of laughter.

If you want to onboard your team to Slack, we would love to help. Email benjamesriddle@gmail.com to get started.

Community + Team Work = Slack was originally published in Together Possible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this article, Alexandra Dumitrescu, Digital Fundraising Coordinator for WWF Romania, shares how thinking creatively and moving fast in response to a crisis can lead to incredible results. Read on to learn more about the conversation battles that are waged online and the importance of online reputation in the digital age.

In recent months, WWF Romania has actively worked to overturn an Environmental Ministry order that would have allowed the hunting of large carnivores in the Carpathian region. This policy would have endangered thousands of bears, lynxes, wild cats and wolves, which are otherwise protected by the EU directives. As a conservation team, we raised our voice and mobilized to collect over 30.000 signatures in support of overturning the ministry order in only two days. This effort was instrumental in changing the decision of the Environment Ministry. With this said, our vocal opposition managed to touch a sensitive issue that affects a community of local hunters.

As you might or might not know, trophy hunting is an easy way for local hunters to make a profit. With only a simple google search for “hunting in Romania” you will be able to find quite a list of options, like the ones below.

Fighting for Conservation, on Facebook?

In the digital age, Facebook has become an effective way to build community and actively communicate with people who share common interests. This too is true for Hunters in Romania, who are very active in a Facebook group, called Vanatoarea in Romania. As we began to collect signatures in opposition of the proposed policy, the hunters Facebook group members decided it would be a good idea (haha) to launch a virtual attack against WWF Romania by inviting the people in the group to rate our Facebook page with 1 star. This proved to be an effective tactic for them, as our rating quickly dropped from 4.6 to 3.4 in a single night.

How we responded:

After waking up and seeing the negative ratings on our page, we set out to quickly respond. Here’s what happened, step by step:

Step 1: We took a screenshot of the negative reviews and posted it on our Facebook page to let our community of supporters online know what was going on.

Step 2: We saw that the hunters deleted the original post in their group.

Step 3: Our followers and extended network started to react to our post, giving us positive reviews and good ratings that helped create a surge of new visits to our page.

Step 4: Some of the hunters began to retaliate by creating and sharing photo memes in their group that attacked the director of WWF Romania, and started to “troll” the comment section of our post.

Step 5: In 4 hours, our page rating boosted up again to 4.9, with over a thousand people giving stars and reviews through this effort. People in our office even started to receive calls about what was happening online, and supporters asked questions about the spontaneous digital campaign that we were running.

Step 8: The hunters started researching who from our organization entered the group, blocked access to them (including myself!) and changed the group visibility to private.

What happened next

Through this situation, the WWF Romania Facebook page reached 3.1k reviews and 4.9 out of 5 stars! Needless to say, this situation demonstrates the power of online communities and digital activism. It also showed us that negative intentions can be turned around to drive positive impact with a little creativity and quick action.

What do you think?

• Do you think this was a good reaction from our part?
• How might we leverage this positive reaction from our Facebook community to drive deeper engagement with our efforts?
• Should we thank the hunters for the string of reviews that we otherwise would not had received?

We’re eager to hear your thoughts. Before you move on, check out this new video of bear cubs that were rescued by the only bear orphanage in Europe. Thanks to our campaign to overturn the policy, thousands of bear cubs like these will be saved from hunting.

To support the efforts of WWF Romania and learn more about this spontaneous social media campaign, email Alexandra (adumitrescu@wwfdcp.ro) and Adriana Trocea, External Communication Coordinator (atrocea@wwfdcp.ro).

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Bears, Likes and Memes, oh my! was originally published in Together Possible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this article, Together Possible steward Ben Riddle interviews Dr. Ashley Brooks, Habitats and Human Wildlife Conflict Lead, Tigers Alive. Brooks story demonstrates the power of adaptive innovation, where an idea from one sector can lead to breakthrough in another. His story is one of courage, and points to the importance of taking risks in spite of uncertainty to turn the impossible into solutions that will help save lives and protect the species that call our planet home.

BR: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, Ashley. Let’s start with your story. How did you first engage with WWF and begin working with the network?

AB: Over the course of my career, all of my education and work has focused on the environment and conservation. Before working with WWF on the Tigers Alive Initiative, I managed a tree kangaroo conservation program in Papua New Guinea, and before that I worked in Vietnam for a few years supporting landscape management with coordination of different projects that involved protected areas and endemic primate species. After that it was a logical process to move into working at a landscape scale with species that interact with human systems, and WWF was a place for me to do that.

BR: What changes have you sensed within in recent years in regards to the way that we approach problem-solving in the WWF network?

AB: The people in the offices that we support are very dedicated and hard working. While I haven’t noticed any particular cultural shifts or changes in the way they work, these are people who are motivated to get out of bed every morning and work a bit extra because they are driven by passion. We have brilliant people in our national offices and they are working for conservation outcomes in very difficult country contexts marked by a lack of funds for conservation and protection, weak management of protected areas, and conservation as a low tier national priority. These forces undoubtedly work against us, and yet the people on the front lines persist. There are so many great people working within our offices.

I have been with the organisation for almost three years, and it’s hard for me to compare this period to previous moments within the organization. I’ve come in during this period of change, and it’s certainly a great idea. The real test comes when we begin to see how it plays out in practice. In theory, these changes will help empower national offices in some regards, but in other ways there are also risks, particularly on the technical side. There are risks of losing the network of independent specialists with technical expertise, which could become watered down in this process. As a network we have to recognize the potential for negative impact indicators from the field. The forces that work against us, like the marketplace and commodity trade, are powerful and we have to accept that.

BR: It seems that this is a challenge around results-based approaches to assessing the effectiveness of initiatives, particularly those that are working in turbulent contexts. How do you approach measurement and impact assessment in your work?

AB: As we strive for measurable impact, we must acknowledge that we don’t work in a vacuum. We work alongside other NGOs, civil society actors and corporate forces, and they all affect the work that we do. We often celebrate our success for some positive outcome that we can trace back to our efforts. However, when we have negative outcome indicators in certain landscapes we are often too shy of reporting on these out of fear of not receiving funding from donors. In many cases, you cannot attribute failure and the negative indicators directly to our work, since there are a much more complex mix of players working with us in the space.

BR: It seems that we need to create a new way to deal with the negative implications of shifts that are happening at a systems level without penalizing front-line actors for the realities of the situation.

AB: Exactly.

BR: Tell me about the Tigers Alive Initiative, how it emerged and how it has shaped your work and efforts.

AB: The Tigers Alive Initiative (TAI) emerged before I joined WWF, so I’ve entered into an active project space. The question I am exploring is: How do we place wild tigers in a future where there are going to be many more people and much more competition for space? This work demands considerations of human-species coexistence, human-tiger conflict, and protecting the unprotected habitat and corridors for tigers. These are the three core areas that I focus on, which are umbrellas for a whole range of other initiatives that are nested underneath.

BR: Sounds easy, right? You’re becoming a bit of a celebrity in the network for your efforts to adapt insights on how we deal with traffic fatalities to wildlife management. How did this begin, and how on earth did you come up with this idea?

AB: One of the things I was charged with doing is to develop a strategy for human-tiger conflict that we can apply across landscapes. From this charge, I set out to research all of the things that we are already doing to minimize conflict, which ranges from people and livestock being killed, to tigers being killed in retaliation. During this process, I talked to a lot of people working at different parts of the landscape scale. Many people said that it would be impossible to come up with an effective strategy, because you are dealing with wild animals, and people who are desperate for food or otherwise motivated to kill tigers. They said that every conflict scenario is unique, from the forces that precipitate the situation to the environment and dynamic systems where the conflict takes place. I chose to take this impossibility as a challenge, and re-framed it by asking: How might I come up with a strategy that deals with the dynamism and wildness of living systems, and emotions and behavior of those who are affected?

From this point on, I started looking at other sectors for inspiration. I looked at the transportation sector globally and found that traffic fatalities are very similar to the situation that we are dealing with with human-tiger conflict. Every traffic accident is completely unique, and there are often fatalities, which make it emotional. You’re also dealing with very complex, dynamic systems where trucks, trains, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, horses and cars are interacting. With this in mind, I researched how the sector addressed the challenge.

In the 1970s, the OECD convened to reframe the strategy for minimising fatalities, due to the fact that there was a measurable, direct correlation between the number of registered vehicles and the number of human fatalities. Since there would be more vehicles and more people in the future, they realized the need to decouple fatalities from the increase in the number of vehicles. The solution that they created was called the Safe System Approach, or the towards-zero approach. All of the OECD countries started to implement this approach after this meeting, and the statistics show that almost immediately after a number of years, the number of fatalities is decoupled from the number of vehicles on the road.

The way they did this was by dividing the transportation system down into its fundamental parts: the vehicle, the driver and the environment. They then came up with nation-specific criteria for determining driver safety. There are really specific things that cut across contexts: the driver can’t be blind or drunk, they have to have a level of training, and so on. The same was done for vehicles: new brakes, new technologies, compulsory speed limits, seat belts, etc. Through this approach, they were able to create country-specific criteria that each relevant department and industry within the country could respond to, and you can see that there was a decoupling of the fatalities from the number of vehicles on the road.

Then I thought, this is exactly the way that we should be approaching human-wildlife conflict, because it is as complex and as emotional. Then I went back to our own conflict system, which can be divided into four parts: the people, assets, habitats and wildlife. When you look at each of these components, we know exactly what is needed across landscapes to ensure the safety of people, assets, habitats and wildlife. From this insight came the Safe System approach to human-wildlife conflict. What we have now is a framework that can be applied to any landscape, where we can focus on any human-species conflict, whether wildlife are damaging crops or killing people, and basically give a report that says: here are the weakest parts of the system, these are the criteria where this system is failing, and here are the kinds of activities that could be implemented in order to meet the criteria. The theory here is that.. We’re only starting to test this now, most comprehensively in Bhutan. What we hope to see is exactly what happened in the transportation sector: a shift in thinking toward safety in each of these parts of the system. Compared with previous wildlife conflict strategies, now we have one single long-term goal, which is to make all of the stakeholders in a landscape safer. Before there was no goal, and small projects were implemented in isolation and responding to symptoms of the problem without a long term vision.

Through this process a baseline emerges that takes into account the safety of people, assets, wildlife and habitat. This will allow us to clearly report to donors and partners our progress towards meeting the baseline. Before now, all we were doing was reporting based on symptoms of the problem. We were doing things like building electric fences where there were none before, and had no way to clearly measure the impacts of these investments on the people, habitats and assets in play. With this new framework, we can develop a clear baseline and set of long-term goals for any landscape, with very simple methods for reporting to donors on the impacts of the initiative. We’re very excited to continue testing this and rolling out the approach in new parts of the world.

BR: This is a case example of adaptive innovation, where something created in one sector even years prior can be tweaked and adapted to another context with far reaching implications, even in some senses greater implications than in the first context that the solution was derived from. From your perspective, how do you effectively adapt a solution across contexts when inspired by an idea in another sector? How do you translate this into another context? What did you do to synthesize insights from the transportation sector, and act on the insights in the context that you’re working in?

AB: It’s hard to know, actually. For me, this all starts by looking for patterns and parallels in other sectors that are similar to the patterns in your sector. When I did this, I started to very quickly realize that almost every other sector is obsessed with safety and reducing risk to human lives and assets. This is true from navigation to aviation and transportation and beyond. I thought it was quite interesting that people in our sector were not focused or obsessed with long-term safety outcomes. I was quite fascinated by this, and realized that there was a huge gap and opportunity in the conservation space that could be filled by adapting this kind of thinking. For me, this was a real light bulb moment.

What also motivated me were all the people who said, “No, you can’t do it,” or “It’s too complex,” and all these other things. In the face of this feedback, I took up the challenge to find a solution. Having worked in this sector for sixteen years with experience on the ground in different places, I started to reach the edge of what’s out there. It became clear that I needed to get out and look to other sectors for inspiration to find other methods and processes that we could copy, replicate or adapt to our situation.

BR: You’re quite the pioneer! As complexity increases, so does our need for solutions and yet we have the same amount of time to find those solutions. In light of this, openness to new ideas, new partners and new approaches becomes a moral imperative, given the challenges that we’re dealing with. As your story shows, these are not challenges driven by a bottom line, but rather challenges driven by questions like, “Do we want to live on this planet anymore?”

AB: Exactly. As we move forward with Tigers Alive, we are coming to terms with complexity by planning for our success and forecasting the potential externalities and systemic implications of our efforts. One of the things that happens in conservation quite often is that we blindly implement programs without actually preparing for the three, four or five possible outcomes from what we are supporting in a given landscape. We never really are prepared for the ripple effects of our actions. Sometimes they are positive, but sometimes we create a situation that makes the problem worse.

For example, we let’s say we develop an alternative livelihoods project that works so well that people are making more money and now have the ability to buy a motorbike or a car. Now it takes them less time to get to the market to sell things, so they have more free time and more resources. Quite often is what we see in this situation, especially in Southeast Asia, when people have more time on their hands they can use this to spend more time in the forest hunting or trapping which is higher than they did previously.

With this in mind, our goal with Tigers Alive is to double the number of tigers by 2022. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that our success will lead to someone else’s tragedy, because more tigers in the wild means that there may be more people killed. As we plan for success in terms of tiger population growth, we must also plan to mitigate and prevent potential tragedies. To do this, we must think in creative and innovative ways because these issues are so complex. Let’s start right now to decouple the rise in the number of tigers from the rise in the number of human deaths.

BR: Going back to your example of the alternative livelihoods project, it seems that we need to equip people with the tools and skills to design solutions that not only work within an economic system, but solutions that take into consideration behavioral economics, human psychology, and the natural systems that we’re working in. Do you find that people in the sector have these skills?

AB: It’s hard to know, because many of our people are working in contexts that are changing quite fast. You might have a well-designed project works for a year but fails the next because of situations outside of our control. We need to skill up in areas of adaptive management and to incorporate flexibility into our design process. I also think that people building solutions are not always thinking for the long-term. For example, if we design a solution that addresses issues of household income but doesn’t address behavior changes that are needed to improve the relationship between people and the habitat surrounding the household, we aren’t thinking about the realities of the situation. If we implement an initiative like this, in five to ten years, people might have a couple of motorbike, a satellite TV and a Land Rover. Quite often, we aren’t thinking about these things as a sector. We often go into a community and press the “pause” button, and then we take our view from what we see from that paused “screen” if you like. What we should be thinking is, let’s also “fast-forward” and think ten to fifteen years ahead and then press “pause” on that vision. We need to be thinking about both present and future realities. For instance, let’s say that we focus on improving household economic opportunities. As this initiative is implemented, how will we take pressure off of the habitats that are now faced with more cars and more people, which now have a disposable income? We need to have this long-term view, and we need to be questioning our assumptions and design ideas against possible futures.

BR: What advice would you give to someone who is stuck on a problem in their work? How might they go about discovering new approaches and breakthrough solutions?

AB: Ha! Well of course, start by thinking outside the box. For me, I read a lot into different sectors. I know that a lot of the people I work with read only environmental publications and watch documentaries about climate change and the environment. By contrast, I don’t always read up on environmental issues but rather explore contemporary history, politics and topics in these sort of fields. I try to expose myself to the issues that people face in the countries that I’m working in by reading up on what has happened in the past and what is going on at present. I would suggest reading outside of your sector as much as possible, and bring in new ideas that way.

BR: What stands out to me about your approach is that you went beyond reading and took a risk by actively testing a new idea. You started by getting out of your field and exploring new ways of working in other sectors, and you thought about ways to combine and adapt these insights to the work you’re doing. Then you developed a “small bet” project that helped you test your assumptions, which helped you prototype a solution that is now being tested in multiple locations, which is incredible. Many people never take a risk because they fear failure, or lack time, the capacity or resources to act. Instead, you chose to push through these walls by saying “you know what, in the face of impossibility I’m going to find a way to do this.” That spirit of courage is what we need in times like these.

AB: You’re right! It really has been like that for me. There has been some opposition in some countries, where people want to wait to see what a solution looks like in practice before they try it. This is changing, though. Recently I have been having conversations with landscape coordinators and people involved with human-wildlife conflict working groups, who want to try this across the network.

BR: This is brilliant. Your story is proof that the cultural shift within the WWF network is already happening all around us. The spirit of “together possible” is being embodied by people like you, and so many others, who are taking risks and trying new things to make progress towards global conservation goals. Now all we need to do now is equip others with what they need to do the same. How can people support your work moving forward?

AB: There’s always a need for fundraising, since we are trying to position ourselves to roll this out around the world. This is a critical moment, where we’re trying to spread the word and build capacity to apply this innovation across landscapes. Because we’re in an emergent phase, we are only just now beginning to demonstrate results. In Bhutan, we are very close to being able to distribute the Bhutanese safe-systems strategy for human-wildlife conflict as a case study that shows donors and others in our network how important and impactful this approach is in practice.

There should be a great deal of support for this, particularly because we’re driving initiatives that fundamentally are tied to issues like food security, poverty alleviation, rural development and alternative livelihoods, which are the community development areas that so many people are interested in funding. People can’t feed themselves if their livestock or crops are damaged, so if we can prove that the Safe System approach works, then we should be able to show how supporting this project can help people protect their crops, support themselves for the year and minimise conflict between humans and species. In this sense, our work is directly tied to development and the pursuit of coexistence.

BR: This has been great, Ashley. Thank you for your time, and thanks for sharing your story.

AB: Thank you! It’s been my pleasure.

To learn more or get involved with the Tigers Alive Initiative and the Safe Systems approach, get in touch with Ashley directly: abrooks@wwfnet.org

People of Together Possible: Ashley Brooks was originally published in Together Possible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am often asked, “what chance does nature conservation stand in Greece”? After all, it’s a country that seems to systematically dominate the world headlines for its economic and political crisis and not its track record in nature conservation. Surely people and politicians are swamped by other priorities.

Not always so…

A few weeks ago, a new draft bill was proposed in Greek Parliament that would deal a major blow to forests — if this bill would pass it would effectively legalize housing which had illegally been built on forest land and at the same time create a legal precedent with massive ramifications for terrestrial ecosystems with over 20% of indigenous flora species in Greece being endemic. Only 48 hours later, after a successful WWF Greece campaign that raised public outrage, the Environment Minister retraced his steps and changed the bill.

So what happened? How was it possible for us to convince politicians and draw public attention to a legal ‘detail’ concerning the future of forests, in a setting dominated by austerity measures, unemployment, collapsing pension schemes, etc.? Part of the answer lies in how we have organized ourselves and adapted to best respond to the lasting crisis in Greece and its environmental implications. Over the years, we have developed an in-house legal “machinery” with amazing reflexes, able to analyze the trickiest legislation and identify the threats. At the same time, we are breaking down complex issues into simple, clear messages that relate to people’s lives.

This is how it worked:

Advance warning

We have already cultivated our relations with various ministries, MPs, forest authorities, etc. We had received notice and a leaked version of the bill, from “whistleblowers” who opposed the bill.

Documented critique

Over the years we have organized a volunteer expert legal team, coordinated by our policy staff. This team has handled over 750 legal cases to date. The team analyzed the bill with lighting speed, sending a detailed legal critique to all members of parliament within less than 24 hours. Meetings were also held with key MPs during the same 24 hr period.

Reaching out

At the same time, our communications team hit social media with a single, powerful Facebook post that became viral, reaching 400.000 people. The media picked up the story, we provided more background information and covered interviews, while at the same time angry citizens were already calling and writing to MPs, asking them to vote against the bill.

And it worked! This is the third time in two years that we have been able to win a major political win for the environment, always in a dire climate of looming elections, constant crisis and policies that concern people’s jobs and lives.

So does this public interest in nature conservation come in spite of the dreadful economic conditions that are affecting the people of Greece or is it actually triggered by this situation? “Our natural environment is the only thing we have left, and we can’t let it go to waste too”, was just one of the hundreds of messages of outrage and support we received through this effort.

Adaptiveness, flexibility, solid policy work, strong communications, relevance to society, a great team of talented, committed people — these are a few of the ingredients of success we need to maintain and further develop.

In the weeks to come, you will hear more from us about how we aim to turn the debt problem of Greece into a solution for conservation and sustainability. Stay tuned!

Best,

Demetres Karavellas, WWF Greece

For more information about this campaign or to learn more about the efforts of WWF Greece, contact Demetres at d.karavellas@wwf.gr.

Nature Conservation in a Time of Crisis was originally published in Together Possible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was written by Stefan Henningsson, Senior Adviser Climate Innovation at WWF in Sweden. The original article was submitted for publishing on 4 May 2016 and reposted here with permission from the author.

On Wednesday 27 April 2016, Freedom Day commemorating the first post-apartheid elections held on that day 1994 in South Africa, it was time once again to celebrate Chinese innovation towards a better planet for us all. Another step towards freedom from fossil fuel energy. Over the four years of running the program in China the quality of the innovations increases rapidly. None of the five new Climate Solver innovations this year even existed on the market when the program started in China four years ago or for that matter at the time when I was forced to leave the COP15 in Copenhagen corridors, if we want to make climate negotiation comparisons. As a collective their commercialization from now on carry the hope of increasing resource and energy efficiency 3–10 times in relevant sectors of replacing inefficient, carbon intensive practices and materials in fertilizers, water pipes, animal feed and data storage. They also spearhead the future of solar energy by already now aiming to increase resource efficiency, energy efficiency, production speed and lifespan of standard solar panels and heaters by 4–10 times. Together their solutions could avoid roughly 230 million tons of CO2 emissions per year by 2025 through taking market shares from less innovative standard practices on the global market. More on the innovations below.

Mr Xu Qinghua, Deputy Secretary General, China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) pointed out that China is entering a New Normal of economic development and we must change our mindset around how we think about growth. As China now enters a New Normal of economic development with lower speed growth it will be important for China to promote innovation in business models as well as technologies. Mr Thandukwazi Nyawose, Economic counsellor at the South African embassy, followed up by rightly pointing out that South Africa is the World’s fastest growing Renewable Energy market now and that they are welcoming Chinese entrepreneurs in this space to set up manufacturing in South Africa for their own and regional markets. As we know from Climate Solver South Africa there are also several South African climate entrepreneurs that could be exciting for the Chinese market. Interestingly JM Green that was awarded in China this year has a South African friend in the space of commercializing nutrient recycling. We hope to see much such south-south collaboration in the years to come.

Mr Zeng Xiaodong, Managing Director of International Operations, Administrative committee of Zhongguancun Science Park raised that cleantech is the new normal. The science park’s core focus is on Talent, Technology and Capital. And they have built up an ecosystem for start-ups on Beijing’s Innoway to which he welcomed all disruptive start-ups in the cleantech space to choose as their platform to grow from. Not least from other regions such as Europe, the Nordic region and the US. He also raised that Climate Solver like solutions is a nice fit with China’s One Belt One Road strategy and expressed a wish to present Climate Solver companies to his Board. He also gave a word of advice to start-ups in low carbon technology: You must use the markets as a power to grow.

In this mix I presented the huge market potential for climate change solutions in the years to come, the need to go 100% renewable energy systems by 2050 latest for 1.5 degrees global warming, the innovation momentum in a range of important cleantech areas that are having a major economic impact and the tipping points provided by the Paris deal. I also got the opportunity to present China’s strengths and weaknesses in the cleantech innovation ecosystem as well as the story of Climate Solver so far.

Dang Falong, Xi’an Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone, presented their zone that hosts 40 000 business whereof 80% are SMEs. Shortage of finance is a challenge for many small companies so they have put a great effort into attracting more than 200 Venture Capitalists to Xi’an in order to address that. Their ambition as a zone is also to be powered by 100% renewable energy. A MoU was signed between WWF and Xi’an Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone to become our newest Partner to the programme of growing the next generation of climate entrepreneurs.

The most active partners this year Baoding National Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone, Hunan Innovative Low Carbon Center, TEDA Eco Center, China-UK Low Carbon Investment Corp, China Renewable Energy Industrial Alliance, Energy Efficiency Investment and Assessment Committee CERS, Top10 China and Institute for Environment and Development made this years Climate Solver China possible and received a diploma and thank yous from us at WWF and the whole audience.

Luo Yun, Chairman of MetaSpace (Beijing) Air Dome Corp, reported that they have gained better market reputation and raised market awareness of the issues of air pollution and climate change. He was also happy to report that in past year their equity has tripled and profits doubled.

In the afternoon investors, policy-makers, corporate representatives as well as old and new Climate Solver entrepreneurs had a workshop. All in Chinese, professionally moderated by Mr. Wu Dayou and highly appreciated by the participants.

And then the highlight of the day of welcoming five new Climate Solver companies. So are they transformative? I say that they are definite disruptors in their sectors. Take a look at the bullets below, the full text and video on links and judge for yourself:

- Bamboo winding pipelines replacing steel, concrete etc with an organic raw material and with an energy consumption in whole production process of a unit length which amounts to 1/4 of a welded steel pipe and 1/3 of a polyethylene pipe

- Super-Thin and Flexible Solar PV cells manufacturing where consumption of silicon material is 10 times lower than for traditional solar panels, reducing cell manufacturing energy consumption 4 times, lowering working temperature 5–7 degrees. Also achieving deposition at 400℃ lower temperature, 10 times faster and a 2 times higher production yield.

- Heat superconducting materials with thermal conductivity about 5000 times that of aluminum. Applied for combined heat and electricity from the sun it can achieve daily solar heat gains that are 60% higher than national standard. They claim to increase the efficiency of PV power generation by up to 50% and the ability of extending average service life of solar water heaters five times from 3–5 years to 25 years.

- Efficient data storage that can cut data center energy consumption 10 times whilst providing same service.

- Food Waste Treatment and Nutrition Recovery by Black Soldier Fly that turns otherwise wasted nutrients into insect protein and natural organic fertilizer to replace conventional production of animal feed and fertilizer

The innovation journey in China is well underway and on that front we are clearly only just seeing the beginning of disruptive change. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor shows us that China has shifted fast from needs-driven to opportunity-driven innovation over the last decade. It also shows that a larger share of Chinese population starts new business compared to other countries and the typical entrepreneur in China today is a young man in their late twenties. Can this force of youth be a change agent to get us away from harmful air pollution, coal dependency, fuel-gustling cars etc? I firmly think so after having met several series of young CEOs, Directors, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs on a mission. And the New Normal of economic development for China is certainly embracing innovation in it’s scope — how deep will it embrace sustainability? The talent is there, so is the force in capital. Will the innovation with it’s technologies and business models be transformative enough?

For more information on this initiate, contact Stefan at stefan.henningsson@wwf.se.

China’s young entrepreneurs are a force of change we should all take seriously was originally published in Together Possible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Around 10,000 participants from 192 countries participated in a vast array of events on topics ranging from crime to communities to corporate responsibility. A few nuggets stood out to me as innovations that can help us break through barriers, or connect beyond silos to achieve a sustainable planet.

The first was a rather unique story of a whale. Numbering just 115 animals in 2004, the Western North Pacific Gray whale faced the enormous threat of a major offshore oil and gas development in its critical feeding habitat off Sakhalin Island, Russia. But thanks to some innovative thinking by the project’s lenders, disaster was averted.

The banks made it a contractual requirement that the oil and gas company work with, and take advice from, an independently convened group of scientists so as to minimise the impact of its activities on the whales. Over a decade and 539 recommendations later, the whale population had increased to 174, showing how powerful such lending conditions can be.

With major infrastructure and extractive projects threatening wildlife in locations all over the world, this is a model that, if followed by other lenders, could play a major role not only in wildlife conservation but in overall environmental sustainability.

Several other events spoke about innovative financial strategies that are delivering benefits — such as Ghana stopping fossil fuel subsidies, and compensating the public for the resulting fuel price increase with measures such as removing fees for state run primary and secondary schools.

We live in the age of technology, and it was no surprise that tech innovations are now helping to solve a growing number of conservation challenges.

In the area of wildlife crime for example, I learnt about plans by Paso Pacifico to construct artificial sea turtle eggs that contain covert GSM-GPS tracking devices and forensic markers. Once the eggs are poached, their movement can be monitored and mapped, revealing trafficking routes. And the New England Aquarium plans to develop a system that digitizes wildlife trade invoices in real time, analysing shipping values like size and weight to find discrepancies between reported and real cargoes.

With so many tech advances, it is more important than ever to stay connected, learn from each other and avoid reinventing the wheel. WILDLABS.NET was set up for just this purpose, as a web platform that brings together conservationists, technologists, engineers, data scientists, entrepreneurs and change makers in a central, open space to share information, ideas, tools and resources.

Other innovations became apparent in discussions with some of the many inspiring people I met at the Congress. For example Rohit Singh, WWF’s law enforcement specialist for Asia, told me how he is working with partners to trial a new version of SMART, the tool used by an increasing number of rangers during wildlife law enforcement patrols.

SMART Connect will for the first time provide ranger teams with real time access to, and integration of, information on locations of poachers, patrols, and key wildlife species. The ability to detect and respond to threats in real-time will shift the focus from looking at where poachinghas happened, to where poaching is happening.

And that’s not all… work is underway to integrate fire alert data collected by NASA via satellite into SMART Connect, enabling ranger teams to potentially take action to put out fires before they become too big to control. If this works, it could have enormous benefits not just for the forests and wildlife which are regularly devastated in raging fires, but also for the air quality so essential for us all. The 2015 South East Asian haze, caused by forest fires in Indonesia, affected tens of millions of people, and according to one study caused more than 100,000 additional deaths.

Elsewhere I met with a major US company who was sourcing a medicinal plant from panda habitat, with the harvesting communities not only gaining sustainability certification (FairWild) but also complying with specific requirements to minimise impacts on pandas, making the product ‘panda friendly’. No matter where you live, there are increasing opportunities for you to save the planet and its wildlife by purchasing the right products.

I learned about how engaging with what may seem at first glance completely unrelated sectors can bring breakthroughs. For example, a new framework has been developed by WWF’s tiger team to tackle conflicts between humans and wildlife, based on an enormously successful system that has dramatically reduced road traffic accidents. And the conservation community has teamed up with anti-corruption specialists to collectively tackle the corruption which is one of the biggest impediments to solving problems such as wildlife crime.

The planet has never before faced such challenges, but key innovations such as these greatly increase our ability make a difference at a scale that matters, to the benefit of both people and nature. And make it an exciting journey!

This story is reposted with permission from the author, Wendy Elliot. To read the original version, check out WWF News & Stories.

Innovation in Hawaii: Stories from the IUCN World Conservation Congress was originally published in Together Possible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.