Shifting practices, shifting knowledge: Climate change and the conservation of Arctic biodiversity in the World Wildlife Fund

Conservation of Arctic biodiversity presents unique challenges, most recently rapid environmental shifts resulting from climate change. This paper focuses on changes in conservation practice within the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF's) Arctic Program from 1992 to the present, and concomitant epistemological changes within the organization. Based on ethnographic study in WWF's offices in Canada, Russia, Norway, and the USA along with text analysis of WWF archives, I examine shifts in what is considered appropriate ecological knowledge for conservation. As ideas about ecology and conservation are altered, some conservation practices remain the same--with climate change presented as renewed justification for both existing practices and innovative programs. The organizational culture of WWF can be viewed as an ethnobiological knowlege system: one that interacts with indigenous and scientific knowledges in complex ways.