On 9 April 2026, a delegation from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) led by Ms. Dong Ke, Director of Global Engagement for TNC China, visited the APFNet Secretariat and held talks with Dr. Wang Chunfeng, Executive Director of APFNet. The two sides had in-depth discussions on deepening regional cooperation and sharing conservation experiences.

Ms. Dong Ke introduced TNC’s project portfolio across the Asia-Pacific region, covering ten economies including China, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. She shared insights from TNC’s work in Indonesia on mangrove restoration, community engagement, identification of high-conservation-value forests, and peatland protection. As a member of the APFNet Council, TNC expressed the hope of deepening regional cooperation with APFNet, aiming to scale up its accumulated experience, best practices, and technical guidelines for broader application.  

Dr. Wang Chunfeng welcomed the TNC delegation and highly commended TNC’s important support for APFNet in its early stage through the TNC-RAFT project and the provision of international experts. He then outlined APFNet’s priority areas and its Fourth Strategic Plan, which focuses on climate change, biodiversity conservation, and community livelihoods. The plan operates across four pillars: capacity building, demonstration projects, information sharing, and policy dialogue. He also invited TNC to participate in the preparatory meeting for the third Pu’er Forum and expressed interest in enhancing mutual support and coordination with TNC during the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), to be held in Mongolia in August 2026.  

The two sides reached a preliminary consensus on several areas of cooperation. For demonstration projects, they discussed the possibility of jointly implementing mangrove conservation and restoration programs, with TNC offering expert technical support to help create replicable and scalable models. On capacity building, they agreed to co-organize this year’s international training workshop on sustainable forest management and restoration under climate change. Furthermore, both sides committed to deepening collaboration in sustainable forest management across the Asia-Pacific region and to promoting effective approaches and methods, in a joint effort to bring regional forest ecosystem protection and sustainable development to a new level.

TNC Visits APFNet Secretariat to Deepen Regional Cooperation