Asian Species Endowment
With 284 Critically Endangered land and freshwater vertebrate species, Southeast Asia has the highest vertebrate extinction rate in the world.
Where action is taken to protect critical habitats and curb overexploitation, Asian species are showing signs of recovery, but scaled-up investment is urgently needed to reverse catastrophic extinctions.
Designed to leverage a higher level of funding for our Asian Species Programme, the Asian Species Endowment is an innovative approach that allows donors to provide timely, long-term, and well-targeted support for the conservation of Asian species.
How it supports Asian species conservation
The wildlife of Southeast Asia is under pressure from several sources: high human population densities, strong demand from the wildlife trade, and deforestation. Southeast Asia has a greater annual rate of deforestation than Latin America, or sub-Saharan Africa – and the rate is increasing. Despite this, it doesn’t receive the same media attention or global concern as comparable crises such as deforestation in the Amazon, and as a result, many species receive little to no conservation attention.
Synchronicity Earth’s Asian Species Programme supports local leaders and communities to catalyse conservation efforts for Asia’s most overlooked species, but wider action is needed to preserve its wildlife from growing threats.
Traditional endowments lock up capital in perpetuity. Due to the urgency of the extinction crisis, our view is that we need to address species declines in Asia within the next decade.
This is why we use an ‘expendable endowment’ model, putting both capital and income to work, which not only provides crucial financial stability but also grows in impact over time.
The Asian Species Endowment aims to: