At Wetlands International, we have always believed that the only way to safeguard the world’s wetlands is through partnerships – from co-creating solutions with local communities and Indigenous Peoples to strategic global partnerships to raise awareness, influence policy and accelerate wetland action for people, nature and climate.

This is why we are thrilled to be partnering with SHOAL – a global ecosystem of partners and collaborators who work together to safeguard the health of Earth’s freshwater habitats and conserve the most threatened freshwater species.

Suffering from decades of neglect, freshwaters are at the sharp end of Earth’s biodiversity crisis, with many thousands of freshwater species threatened with extinction. Freshwater fish and amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate groups.

It is only through ambitious, collaborative conservation that we can hope to bring these species back from the brink. Conserving these highly threatened species will improve water quality and human health, and catalyse further ecosystem services that will benefit the wider environment and provide greater food security for the millions who depend on freshwater fish as their primary source of protein.

SHOAL’s approach is to mobilise, coordinate and catalyse partners to escalate and accelerate action for the freshwater species, habitats and communities. As part of this collaboration model, SHOAL has two types of partners:

• Local Action Partners are individuals or organisations that SHOAL supports, which work on the ground to accelerate action for freshwater fishes; and
• Strategic Partners – like Wetlands International and others such as the IUCN Freshwater Fish Specialist Group, Mahseer Trust, WWF and ZSL – are organisations that contribute to the SHOAL partnership in a multitude of different ways including awareness raising, capacity building and mentoring, in situ and ex situ conservation support, and technical advice.

Under our Strategic Partnership, we will specifically look to collaborate on:

• Joint storytelling and communications to raise awareness of freshwater conservation success;
• Programmes or campaigns focused on freshwater recovery and species protection;
• Knowledge exchange to build capacity and accelerate conservation action; and
• Building capacity and financial support for local action partners, recognising that lasting change begins at the community level.

Wetlands International brings our unique global network to the partnership – and our decades of work on protecting and restoring freshwater ecosystems.

Our ongoing freshwater work ranges from dam and barrier removal in Europe, to water governance in Ethiopia, and alternative sustainable livelihoods in Latin America. Under our new 10-year strategy, we will scale up their work on rivers, lakes and peatlands from site level actions to landscape level approaches, from influencing global fora to continuing to support two global initiatives – the Freshwater Challenge and Peatland Breakthrough.

“We firmly believe that the bigger and broader the SHOAL, the stronger it becomes, and the greater our shared impact will be.”