Conservation Planning and Project Coordination Opportunity in the River Yangtze Basin

Descriptions

WWF-UK seeks expressions of interest from suitably qualified organisations and individuals to conduct systematic conservation planning within China's Yangtze River basin with the ultimate aim of identifying gaps within the current Protected Area network as a priority for future restoration and/or protection. This includes facilitating WWF-UK, WWF-China and identified stakeholders through the entire process. Globally, we may have met the 2020 ambition for the CBD Aichi Target of 17% of the global area of inland water to be protected, although there is uncertainty that all inland waters are well represented . However, freshwater biodiversity is continuing to rapidly decline at the global scale; the index of freshwater wildlife populations has fallen by 83% since 1970 and close to 30% of all freshwater species are considered to be under immediate threat of extinction . The lack of correlation between the global increase in protected areas and the continuing rapid decline in freshwater biodiversity has led conservationists to question the efficacy of protected areas as a tool for freshwater species conservation. This project is aimed at investigating the factors necessary to create a national and/or basin scale network of freshwater protected areas in the Yangtze River Basin to achieve greater cumulative impact than can be achieved by the summing of individual protected areas, with the ultimate aim of reversing global declines in freshwater biodiversity. It is anticipated that this contract will involve running at least one workshop within the Yangzte Basin to work with stakeholders, including identification of evidence and ascertaining conservation values, developing and producing the MARXAN model and conducting all modelling work, ground-truthing outputs with stakeholders and providing final outputs and recommendations. Outputs from this work will support the delivery of WWF-China's HSBC Water Programme Wetland Goal as well as WWF's global work to address freshwater biodiversity declines by improving strategic decision making about freshwater protected areas. To express interest in this opportunity please provide a short covering letter outlining 1) your motivation and relevant experience, 2) your overall approach to delivering this work, 3) your proposed budget and 4) whether you may be able to offer any separate in-kind contribution to this work. Responses should be sent by email to KHughes@wwf.org.uk by Midday on 1st March 2019.