Reviewing efforts in global forest conservation for sustainable forest management: The World Wide Fund (WWF) case study

The world's forests are in crisis - facing greater threats than ever before; and there is need to document efforts made in protecting them for effective forest resources management. The paper compiled and assessed from 1996-1998 a maiden report of the efforts of a leading world forest conservation Organization - the World Wide Fund (WWF) in the five geo-continental zones of the world. The quantitative-temporal change analysis, revealed that about 34.21 to 56.60 million Swiss Francs were committed to global forest conservation during the period; and that between 1996 and 1997, there were changes (increases) in the "effort" parameters studied, viz; Expenditure, Certified Forest Cover, Number of Certified Forests and Number of WWF Projects, Between 1997 and 1998, there was a change (decrease) in only the Expenditure; although the Organization still recorded an improvement in its targets. The regression analysis, showed poor relationships of about 0.5% to 34.8% (at 5% significant level) between Expenditure and the other three variables. This was attributed to the integrated approach adopted by the WWF (field projects, policy initiatives, campaigns, partnerships and community participation) which was not accounted for in the relationships considered. This implies that the expenditure profiles of the WWF in forest conservation have multidimensional perspectives. Key Words: Global Forest, Conservation, Assessment, WWF Organization, Efforts. Global Jnl Pure & Applied Sciences Vol.10(2) 2004: 271-27