Threats to biodiversity require people-centric solutions

Human-caused threats to biodiversity, like habitat degradation and overfishing, require people-centric solutions that meet the needs of wildlife and local communities. To protect biodiversity – and the prosperity of local communities worldwide – we must adopt and spur demand for more responsible and sustainable practices that safeguard soil, water, forests, and wildlife.

Rare is the global leader in developing, implementing, and scaling behavioral science for conservation. Building upon our deep experience in biodiversity conservation, our social marketing approach cuts across fisheries, regenerative agriculture, innovative finance, climate action, and other pressing environmental issues to foster individual and community action that helps people and nature thrive.

Local cacao farmers Myriam Contreras Avella, Virginia Montenegro, and Jesus Adriano Lancheros are pictured with Armandilla, the armadillo mascot of Rare’s for the Lands for Life program in Meta, Colombia. Armandilla encourages farmers and their communities to protect biodiversity. Photo Credit: Lorena Velasco for Rare
Local cacao farmers Myriam Contreras Avella, Virginia Montenegro, and Jesus Adriano Lancheros are pictured with Armandilla, the armadillo mascot of Rare’s for the Lands for Life program in Meta, Colombia. Armandilla encourages farmers and their communities to protect biodiversity. Photo Credit: Lorena Velasco for Rare.

How Rare protects biodiversity

Solutions for protecting biodiversity must come from the local communities stewarding those resources. Rare balances conservation with human use, centering local communities in solving natural resource challenges. Through its people-centric approach to biodiversity conservation, Rare deploys behavior change campaigns that help individuals and communities develop sustainable practices for protecting wildlife, using land, and managing coastal fisheries.

Advancing locally-led, community-based solutions for biodiversity

Rare empowers communities to lead in the protection of soil, water, and wildlife to ensure their needs are met while safeguarding nature. Our people-centered approach engages smallholder farmers and small-scale fishers in mobilizing their communities to adopt nature-based solutions and practices that benefit people and nature.

Placing the buoy in the demarcation zone in Honduras.

Committing to 30 x 30 goals

Global targets for biodiversity conservation, like the Biodiversity Plan and 30×30, require effective natural resources management plans that include local communities and Indigenous Peoples as leaders. With a proven track record of using behavioral insights to effectively engage local communities in stewarding their resources, we are working to support the global 30×30 commitment to protect ‘the right 30%’ of our lands and seas. Rare works with community leaders and Indigenous Peoples in the Coral Triangle of the Pacific, the Amazon Coast of Brazil, the Mesoamerican Reef in the Caribbean, the rich farmland of Colombia, and Mozambique’s Wild Coast — areas where high biodiversity intersects with human use.

Nurlini at the market.

Financing for conservation

Rare connects rural and remote communities with the formal financial sector to better drive financial resources to local communities who sustainably manage vital resources. Through microbusiness formalization, savings groups, insurance, and nature-based solutions, communities working with Rare are better positioned to protect natural resources and tackle our planet’s great environmental challenges.

Explore our biodiversity work

Working with communities to safeguard biodiversity since 1973.

Conserving 30% of the world’s land and ocean.

Amplifying solutions to the world’s most urgent environmental challenges.

Global biodiversity is under threat like never before.

You can inspire change so people and nature thrive.

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Coral off the coast of Palau.

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