Laos consumer demand reduction

Environmental Investigation Agency, UK (EIA)

EIA investigative products on the trade in tigers and their parts and derivatives, profiling individuals and networks involved in this trade, combined with EIA’s analysis of open source information, assists stakeholders to identify relevant consumer groups and to further target their campaigns to reduce consumer demand – see above description in the law enforcement support section.

TRAFFIC

TRAFFIC has been helping improve policies and legislation at the national level, engage public-private partnerships, and drive a suite of interventions to catalyze behavior change efforts with partners to reduce demand in major consumer markets in Southeast Asia and China. TRAFFIC hosts the Wildlife Consumer Behaviour Change Toolkit www.changewildlifeconsumers.org and provides a suite of services for the ‘Demand Reduction Community of Practice’ that uses the Toolkit as an information and coordination hub – services include an element of Webinars, learning and experience exchange events, Expert Roundtables on key topics and Good Practice Guidelines on measuring the impact of behavioral change.

United for Wildlife (UfW)

UfW has grown a large and engaged social media community through a variety of digital campaigns and activities aimed at young people across the world. With a growing online community to share news with and raise awareness of illegal wildlife trade, United for Wildlife shares unique content and activities enabling young people to engage with the issue of illegal wildlife trade while learning more about conservation in general.

United for Wildlife has also developed a platform for the delivery of online learning material and provides online courses that enable self-paced learning on a number of general and specialized topics relevant to conservation, including a short course focusing on illegal wildlife trade. At the end of 2016 over 8,500 people from 196 countries had registered on the platform and more than 170,000 people follow the course and its content on social media with marketing focused on the priority countries identified by UfW in regards to consumer markets. The platform won a highly regarded Learning Technologies award in 2016.

United for Wildlife further works with the online gaming sector to expand the audience of conservation messaging, with 100,000 downloads of the UfW “We Are The Rangers” Minecraft map, and over 2.6 million YouTube play-throughs. This included content created by popular Minecraft YouTubers in Thailand and initial player generated map events submitted from Vietnam.

USAID Wildlife Asia

USAID Wildlife Asia will reduce consumer demand for wildlife parts and products by communicating, mobilizing and advocating ways to change behaviors and build new social norms around the use of wildlife. Planned activities include communication campaigns using proven social and behavior change communication (SBCC) approaches and technical assistance to strengthen capacity of organizations to use SBCC in planning and implementing demand reduction campaigns. Year 1 activities include conduct of a situational analysis to identify priority consumer segments, demand drivers and influencing factors underlying the purchase and use of wildlife products in China, Thailand and Vietnam; development and preparation for implementation of new campaigns in these three countries; as well as providing support to align existing campaigns with USAID Wildlife Asia messages, and SBCC capacity building of organizations involved in wildlife communication. The USAID Wildlife Asia Activity is implemented by the International Resources Group (IRG) – which is owned by RTI International – with a consortium of organizations and companies including FHI 360, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Freeland and Integra.

World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

WWF-Laos will work with the Lao government and organizations in Laos on public outreach and awareness-raising activities. It is also exploring potential activities to support the government and local authorities in engaging with communities and targeting travelers and tourists on IWT issues to reduce poaching and trading of wildlife.