For a Living Planet 

This year, the year of WWF’s 50th anniversary, there is much to celebrate. More than a billion hectares protected, species including the giant panda and the great whales brought back from the brink of extinction, forests and fisheries moving towards sustainability, and so much more.

There are the concepts that WWF worked to embed in the world’s consciousness – sustainable development, biodiversity and ecological footprint. WWF took these words to a wider world, but more importantly the ideas that lie behind them.

Then there is the recognition of the environment that WWF helped to forge. Back in 1961, there were no ministers of the environment, no United Nations Environment Programme, no international and precious few national environmental policies or laws.

When WWF set out, it did so on the basis of doing practical conservation, and as it evolved, it became a beacon, demonstrating what could be done and how it could be achieved. This brief account describes some of what has been achieved. It also charts the evolution of those efforts, the persistent search for new, more potent ways to spur change.

WWF’s abiding commitment is to create a world in which people live in harmony with nature. As it enters its second half-century, that will mean redoubling its commitment to engaging others in finding the insights and solutions that can help move us all on to a sustainable path. It will mean demonstrating that success is possible: working with governments and communities to secure lasting conservation of some of the most extraordinary places on Earth; working with producers and buyers to bring sustainability into global markets. And it will mean enlisting not just millions but billions of people in the urgent cause of building a vibrant, prosperous, sustainable future.

Jim Leape
Director General
WWF International

CONTENTS

1. About WWF
2. The 1960s
3. The 1970s
4. The 1980s
5. The 1990s
6. The 2000s

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