Collaborative Fund Projects
Collaborative Fund Projects have had significant conservation impact - informing and helping to shape conservation policy and building capacity for conservation.
Every Collaborative Fund project addresses a high priority biodiversity conservation issue and includes some combination of research, education, policy and practice.
The majority of projects are focused on contributing to high-level global conservation processes (CBD, SDGs, IPBES) and/or to thematic areas that are widely recognised as global conservation priorities (climate change, Natural Capital, food production/security).
The CCI Collaborative Fund aims to facilitate innovative and necessary collaborations between CCI members, with particular emphasis on enabling successful partnerships between University of Cambridge Departments and conservation organisations based in the Cambridge area.
Select Collaborative Fund Projects are featured as Case Studies in our Impact section.
Find out more about the generous supporters of this fund and how the fund is managed on the Collaborative Fund information webpage.

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Scaling up agroforestry as a forest landscape conservation and sustainable livelihood strategy
Numerous initiatives have recently launched in West Africa to help scale up agroforestry, which is regarded as a potential nature-based solution to climate mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity, and rural livelihood challenges. To date, however, there has been limited success. It is thought that a lack of land tenure and knowledge about best practices are key barriers…

Where will new woodlands yield the greatest benefits for bird conservation?
Woodland creation, through both tree-planting and natural regeneration of trees on open land, can be a nature-based solution with numerous societal benefits including for biodiversity. However, the conversion of open habitats to new woodlands can negatively affect the conservation of open-habitat species, and much of the current policy and guidance on woodland creation focuses on…

Developing practical guidance on assessing air quality regulation as a service from nature
Air pollution is an acute environmental pressure that affects human health, interacts with climate change, and impacts biodiversity and sensitive ecosystems at a range of scales. It can also increase susceptibility to respiratory conditions like COVID-19. Remediation by natural vegetation can cost-effectively reduce air pollutants from different sources (industry, etc.), lowering risks to both human…

Developing next-generation tools to predict the biodiversity impacts of feeding 10 billion people
Agriculture must expand and intensify if it is to feed a growing population. Where it does so will profoundly affect the future of biodiversity. We will develop and combine cutting-edge models of agricultural futures and novel assessments of species’ vulnerability and population persistence to predict which regions and species are likely to be most impacted,…

Science-based targets for driving global wetland conservation applicable from local to global scales
The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric allows business, governments and civil society to quantify their potential contributions to stemming global species loss, and can be used to calculate national, regional, sector-based, or institution-specific targets. STAR currently lacks a means to establish these science-based targets for freshwater ecosystems. To address this need, this project…