Political leaders of the WIO countries have recognised that cooperation among regional organisations and across sectors, including greater engagement of the private sector and civil society, is required to address growing regional challenges such as marine and coastal conservation, marine plastic pollution, climate change, response to disasters like oil spills or cyclones etc.

A series of successive policy processes, including the 2015 call by African Union (AU) for the development of an African Regional Ocean Governance Strategy through the Cairo Declaration of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), the 2017 Libreville Declaration of AMCEN, and a baseline study on WIO Ocean Governance, led to the mandate for the development of WIO’s Regional Ocean Governance Strategy at the 2021 Conference of Parties to the Nairobi Convention (NC) (Decision CP.10/5). In response, the Nairobi Convention Secretariat convened a Support Team to help guide a participatory development of the WIO ROGS by working with representatives of the NC Contracting Parties, the AU, the WIO’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs), the Indian Ocean Commission, private sector and civil society actors in a Regional Ocean Governance Strategy Task Force.

The objective of this building block is to provide technical teams with parameters for measuring the effectiveness of restoration actions in the field.

The monitoring plan should include elements to evaluate the following parameters: 1) degree of development of planted species and their response capacity, 2) changes in water patterns and abundance, 3) changes in biodiversity dynamics (presence and abundance), as well as in the disappearance of exotic and/or invasive species, 4) changes in the environmental conditions of the area, and 5) changes in land dynamics and use, as well as public use and community demands.

The acoustic component of the project holds special significance, as it played a pivotal role in the automatic detection of over 138 species, with 95 of them being integrated into our pattern matching algorithms. This forms a robust foundation for the continuous monitoring of the region over the upcoming years, allowing us to observe how various environmental factors influence species presence

The objective of this building block is to provide developers and implementers of ecosystem and landscape restoration projects with a tool that uses remote sensing, augmentation factors, and the integration of the two as a way to evaluate the effectiveness of restoration interventions on the ground.

To evaluate the line of impact of ecosystem services based on remote sensing, baseline data (baseline, management units and recent images) are collected and the differential between the initial and final year is calculated through: the definition of the increment tables, the normalization and adjustment of images, and the modeling of ecosystem services.

The increment factor approach is used for cropland and/or livestock where spectral indices derived from satellite imagery fail to accurately detect vegetation changes; and is calculated through: definition of baseline data, categorization of restoration practices and estimation of increment factors per implemented measure.

By executing this process, the area directly and indirectly impacted is available.

Following two funding calls, a total of 17 projects were selected. The projects represent a very wide range of different approaches and solution ideas for pursuing the Alliance's goals, depending on the respective context.

To increase the visibility of the projects and to foster knowledge exchange they are invited to present their ongoing work, intermediate goals and preliminary results to the Alliance community through posts on the website or at online events.

The members area is exclusive for registered members (individuals or organisations) of the Alliance. The membership is free of charge and gives you the chance to join forces for a common cause as well as connect, collaborate and partner with other members.

The Members Area serves as a platform for internal exchange, sharing of interesting articles, job opportunities and event dates as well as having access to video recordings of past events on demand.

The aim is to establish practices, rules and/or standards to reduce risks to the environment, human and animal health in trade in wild animals and wild animal products in selected partner countries in global biodiversity hotspot regions. Among other things, risk assessments, the design of educational measures in different formats (digital and non-digital campaigns, training courses, etc.) and the scientific monitoring of the implementation of good practices (e.g. impact assessments) are to be promoted. The Alliance brings the relevant actors together across sectors and use concrete findings to formulate adapted regulations or or supports the institutionalization of relevant practices.

The International Alliance currently has 3 Working Groups, which are led by the members themselves and receive support from the Alliance Secretariat. Each Working Group is led by 1-2 chairs and the group meets every 6-8 weeks to ensure a continous work process.

We currently have the following Working Groups:

- Science Policy Interface (chair: Sue Liebermann, WCS)

Considering our core understanding of wildlife we want to infuse this understanding, based on scientific evidence, into international political processes.

- Transformative System Change: The Big Picture (chair: Alex D. Greenwood, IZW Berlin; Barabara Maas, NABU)

There are underlying fundamental obstacles to achieving the Alliances objectives and goals. Identifying and addressing these is the focus of this Working Group. 

- Evaluation/Effective Interventions (chair: Craig Stephen, One Health Consultant)

The aim is to gather good practices on effective interventions from Alliance members to enable learning and knowledge exchange across sectors and regions. 

The goal of the Consultation Facility is to provide context-specific multidisciplinary consultancy services from Alliance experts to governments/governmental institutions in countries with a high risk of novel diseases of zoonotic origin to prevent spill-over infections.

The expertise of more than 180+ member organisations and individual experts in the Alliance will be used to put together those interdiscplinary teams.

The Consultation Facility specializes on medium-term, primary preventive and context-specific government advisory services with concrete results in the context of health risks in wildlife trade and consumption along the entire contact and trade chain.

In May 2023, the Elephants Alive (EA) team embarked on an Human-Elephant Conflict barrier implementation mission to the Namaacha Valley in Southern Mozambique. EA and Mozambique Wildlife Allience (MWA), as well as delegates from Save The Elephants (Kenya) and PAMS Foundation (Tanzania), came together in an inspirational cooperation exercise to implement a 4-way mitigation soft barrier to protect three crop fields. The fields had been identified through field research and GPS tracking data, as high-risk for elephant crop-raiding. One side of the fence was built by hanging beehives. As the hives start to become occupied with wild swarms, we will keep training local farmers on how to keep hives and colonies healthy, by assessing the frame structures and checking if the bees have enough pollen to produce honey. This knowledge will allow the farmers to increase both their crop production, protect crops from hungry elephants and supplement their income from honey sales. The second side of the fence was made up of metal strip fencing, the noise and sight of which has been proven to deter elephants from breaking into farmers’ fields. We set up the third side of the fence with chilli rags. The fourth side of the soft barrier fence was comprised of flashing lights, a technique successfully used in Botswana.