The COVID-19 pandemic is showing us that business as usual does not work.

Through short conversational video pieces, our Market Voices project is convening diverse perspectives on how companies, communities and consumers can respond to changing global markets and deliver a just, green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our conversations to date explore nature tourism, community enterprise, food security, and behaviour change.

As we rebuild our lives and the global economy, there is an opportunity to create a greener, fairer, and more resilient world - one in which nature-based solutions enhance human health and safety, and tackle the converging crises of climate breakdown and nature loss.

Let’s reimagine the future together.

Find out more about our partnerships with business, our work on community enterprise, and how we are working with private sector to build back better.

For decades, conservation and development organisations have worked with communities to develop nature-based tourism, helping prevent unique landscapes from conversion to agriculture and urban development.

Under normal circumstances, tourism expenditure in protected areas alone amounts to $600 billion a year - but this has been drastically reduced by COVID-19.

For communities dependent on nature tourism for their income and livelihoods, the next year is critical.

We urgently need to find innovative solutions, including creating alternative sources of income, and ensure that nature tourism is part of economic recovery packages.

If your community, company or organisation can help, please get in touch with WWF or check out the following initiatives and resources:
 

• Future of Tourism Coalition - putting communities at the heart of recovery 

• Beyond Tourism in Africa Innovation Challenge - incubating new community revenue models not depend on tourism, plus a new Africa-led Collaborative Platform

• IUCN Save Our Species African Wildlife Rapid Action Grants

• Sustainable Travel Alliance in China

• World Tourism Organisation Tourism Recovery Technical Assistance Package - for UN Member States

• comprehensive list of information, guidance and resources on COVID-19 and sustainable tourism

Addressing environmental and social challenges such as nature loss and inequality, successful community enterprises deliver benefits for people and nature.

Now, many have gone out of business due to difficulties in accessing raw materials, or as a result of reduced demand for their products - especially those bought by tourists.

In recovery, we cannot go back to business as usual.

We need to develop innovative entrepreneurial approaches and partnerships which work for local communities, diversify livelihoods, build local resilience, and ensure that recovery is fair and inclusive, especially for marginalised and vulnerable groups.

If your company or organisation can help support community enterprise, please get in touch with WWF or check out the following initiatives and resources:
 

• Nature Pays - our project supporting community conservation enterprise and access to markets in more than 50 countries
• Nature Pays Practitioner Guide - our guide to community conservation enterprise
• COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs - join the World Economic Forum sponsored Alliance and support social entrepreneurs as first responders to the COVID-19 crisis and as pioneers of a green, inclusive society and economic system

Pandemic-driven restrictions on movement have made it more difficult to plant, grow and harvest food, and get it from source to consumer. And government action to secure domestic food supplies by limiting exports has exacerbated the challenge.

On average, global food imports have increased by 8% annually since 2000. And with an estimated 1.1 billion people worldwide engaged in agriculture, the sector accounts for 31% of global employment and 4% of global GDP.

Deforestation and conversion of natural habitats for crop and livestock production bring people and wildlife closer together, increasing the likelihood of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 jumping from wild species to domesticated animals and people.

With the need to feed a future global population of 10 billion, in recovery from the pandemic, governments, businesses, and communities must invest in sustainable and regenerative agriculture which changes how we produce and consume food, better values natural capital, and supports resilient livelihoods.

At WWF, we are working to create sustainable food systems that ensure food security and protect nature. If your company or organisation can help, please get in touch with WWF or check out the following initiatives and resources:
 

• WWF Food Practice - our global programme of work addressing sustainable production, food waste, and sustainable diets
• Planet-Based Diets - a science-based platform to encourage diets that are good for people and planet
• Save 1/3 - an initiative fighting the 1/3 of food produced globally that goes to waste

Our lifestyles have changed abruptly in unprecedented ways. Consumer trends are evolving as supply chains are disrupted and business is forced to innovate. And professional and personal interactions have become more virtual and flexible, with many more people working from home, perhaps permanently.

While we grapple with the plethora of negative impacts from the pandemic, there have also been some ‘accidental’ but positive indirect effects on conservation. There has also been a spike in trust in science-based information and sources.

COVID-19 is driving new norms. And the pandemic is our cue to reconsider what makes us happy and well, how we live our lives, and how we interact with the world around us. It has also highlighted the interdependent relationship between people and planet.

Here are some resources exploring how we might shape consumer behaviour for well-being and prosperity, and how we can make some of the more positive changes in our behaviour more permanent:
 

• Save Nature Please - a practical framework designed to support more effective interventions, from global communications and campaigns to citizen and community engagement
• Change Wildlife Consumers - community and open-source research and guidance on behavioural change with a focus on the illegal wildlife trade
• Behavior Change for Nature - a behavioural science toolkit from Rare comprising 15 behavioural strategies and case studies addressing today's environmental issues