The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), with a history spanning over 90 years, has evolved into a trusted global leader in advancing conservation, animal welfare, and sustainability.
Led by Dr Martín Zordan, CEO, and Karen Fifield MNZM, president, WAZA supports its members in adopting and sharing best practices across the global zoo and aquarium community, leveraging its extensive network to drive positive change.
This article explores WAZA’s mission, focus areas, and impact through insights shared by Zordan and Fifield, as well as the significance of its upcoming Annual Conference from 3 to 7 November at Taronga Zoo in Sydney.
WAZA’s mission
At the heart of WAZA’s mission is a dedication to being a globally recognised and trusted leader in conservation and animal welfare.
“We aim to advance conservation and animal welfare in terms of best practice,” says Fifield, who is halfway through her two-year term as WAZA president. She also serves as chief executive of Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo in New Zealand. “That’s what we’re trying to achieve as a global organisation for leading progressive zoos and aquariums.” The Association seeks to deliver global benchmarks that guide zoos and aquariums in caring for animals and protecting their natural habitats.
WAZA not only sets these benchmarks but also ensures that they are accessible and applicable worldwide, thanks to its deep engagement with regional and national zoo and aquarium associations. Its overarching goal is to be a convener of best practices, collecting and disseminating global knowledge across its network.
Highlighting how WAZA provides support, Zordan says:
“We capture global knowledge and best practices and then make those available to our members through documents, guidelines, and strategies. This is a collaborative effort. Each region shares its perspective on what these guidelines should include to ensure that we are inclusive of the practices from WAZA’s diverse membership.”
In this way, WAZA plays a pivotal role in uniting zoos and aquariums worldwide to advance common conservation and animal welfare goals.
A commitment to animal welfare
One of WAZA’s core initiatives is developing and promoting its Animal Welfare Strategy. This comprehensive guide aims to help its members both evaluate and improve animal welfare standards.
“WAZA’s 2023 Animal Welfare Goal is a specific goal that each of the WAZA member associations in different parts of the world should have an animal welfare evaluation process in place that complies with specific criteria established by WAZA,” says Zordan.
Fifield, who previously chaired WAZA’s Ethics and Animal Welfare Committee, describes the impact of this effort:
“What was wonderful to see was how everyone embraced this. Everyone wanted to get better, to improve standards, to ensure we were undertaking best practice for the animals in our care.”
Refining these global benchmarks is a testament to WAZA’s collaborative nature. Fifield adds that the input of WAZA’s global membership shaped the strategy and the Animal Welfare Goal. This includes zoos and aquariums from diverse regions. The result is a strategy and benchmark that reflects both the collective experience and the aspirations of the Association’s members.
“We distil all of this global information into something meaningful for members. We’ve also translated those documents into various languages, making them as accessible for our members as possible. Some of our members have done the translations for us, so they’re really engaged with it and committed to it.”
One example of how WAZA’s network facilitates improvements in animal welfare came from Latin America. Here, ALPZA, the regional zoo association, worked with experts from Australia to refine its animal welfare evaluation processes. “This knowledge transfer allowed ALPZA to access expertise from another part of the world, improving animal welfare much faster than if they had developed the system from scratch,” says Zordan.
This highlights the immense value of WAZA’s global network and ability to facilitate collaboration across borders.
WAZA’s role in global species preservation
As an umbrella organisation representing leading zoos and aquariums, WAZA coordinates efforts that contribute to biodiversity conservation, species protection, and conservation education on a global scale. Its role in international conservation extends from direct species conservation initiatives to broader ecosystem protection, as well as policy influence, positioning zoos and aquariums as vital players in biodiversity conservation and sustainability efforts worldwide.
“In 2015, we worked on the WAZA Conservation Strategy. This supported our members in ensuring that conservation is the core of their organisations,” says Zordan. “Everyone, from the person at the entrance of the zoo selling tickets onwards, needs to be able to explain that and feel that that’s the nature of the organisation.”
“We also have a role in global conservation frameworks and intergovernmental agreements to address and mitigate the biodiversity crisis.”
For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s Global Biodiversity Framework for this decade aims to halt biodiversity loss. “Our recent engagement with that has been through Reverse the Red, which aims to reverse the extinction of species. For that, we’re looking at how we support our members in working with national governments to implement specific actions to recover species and halt biodiversity decline.”
Recently, the inaugural World Species Congress, organised by Reverse the Red, brought together conservation organisations worldwide for the first time. In New Zealand alone, 30 organisations pledged to save 50 species by 2030. This shows the powerful impact that is possible when stakeholders unite behind a common goal.
Fifield says connecting zoos and aquariums with other conservation organisations creates synergies:
“WAZA’s office is good at using those networks with other conservation agencies to understand how we can play our part.” Its ability to bring together diverse conservation actors to tackle complex issues is a core strength that will continue to drive positive outcomes for species conservation.
The importance of sustainability
For WAZA, sustainability is inseparable from conservation.
“Sustainability is the other side of the conservation coin,” says Fifield. “If we’re not walking the talk, then how can we expect people to understand why conservation is important?”
This philosophy has driven WAZA’s work on sustainability, mainly through the Protecting Our Planet strategy, developed in 2020.
The strategy, built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), provides a framework for members to integrate sustainability into their operations. It includes case studies from WAZA members to demonstrate the different ways in which this can be done. WAZA has also produced a series of practical guides that help zoos and aquariums reduce their carbon footprint, eliminate single-use plastics, and adopt sustainable forestry products.
“All of these guides have come from that strategy. They are very practical and easy to implement, whether you’re just starting your sustainability journey or are already well on the way,” adds Fifield.
Collective effort
The impact of WAZA’s sustainability efforts is visible in its members’ actions. Some have achieved carbon neutrality, while others aim to go carbon-positive. This progress is fuelled by the strong sense of community among WAZA members, who are inspired by each other’s successes.
Fifield emphasised the power of this collective effort:
“People get inspired by each other and learn from each other; ‘If you can do that, then I’m going to do that. How did you do it?’ Our WAZA community increasingly embraces sustainability as the other side of the conservation coin because we won’t have species if we don’t have a healthy planet.”
One example of WAZA’s sustainability efforts is the PalmOil Scan mobile app, developed by the WAZA Palm Oil Subcommittee and its member institutions, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Chester Zoo and Auckland Zoo.
“You can scan a product, and it will give you a score on how sustainable it is in terms of using Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO),” says Zordan. “While you might love orangutans and other species in places that are being affected by unsustainable palm oil, you might think, ‘I live in the UK, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ Now, you can use the app and start making wiser consumption decisions, which is one of the Sustainable Development Goals.”
Community conservation
WAZA’s commitment to sustainability is not limited to its members’ operations but extends to conservation projects on the ground. Zordan highlighted an example from Madagascar, where WAZA members are working to conserve lemurs while simultaneously addressing local community needs:
“The SDGs talk about very broad things – the first is about poverty, and the second is about zero hunger. It would be easy to think we care about the animals in Madagascar, so we need to only focus on the animals there. But you cannot invest in the lemurs without investing in the people there, too. You can’t neglect the fact that the people who will be protecting those animals are in a situation where they might be hungry or in poverty. So, how you integrate that into your projects is essential.”
Fifield adds:
“We increasingly understand that working with local people and understanding those cultural contexts are very important for conservation outcomes. For instance, in Aotearoa New Zealand we’re thinking about First Nations people. We’re looking at conservation through the lens of First Nations people and working as partners when we are doing work outside our own cities. Conservation projects that work with local people need to embrace what they’re trying to tell you.”
By supporting capacity-building programmes, WAZA members are helping local communities improve their livelihoods, thereby reducing pressures on wildlife and habitats.
This holistic approach is central to WAZA’s philosophy. “It is impossible to talk about conservation without also talking about sustainability,” he adds. By integrating the local community’s needs with wildlife conservation, WAZA is also helping to create more sustainable and lasting solutions.
The WAZA Annual Conference: shaping the future of zoos and aquariums
WAZA’s upcoming Annual Conference will be held at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. It will allow members to engage in forward-thinking discussions about the future of zoos and aquariums. The theme for this year’s conference, “Towards 2050,” focuses on envisioning what zoos and aquariums will look like in the next 25 years.
Fifield is excited about the conference’s focus on future trends:
“We will explore how technology, such as AI and augmented reality, will shape the future of husbandry and visitor engagement. What will Zookeepers be doing in the future, and how will zoos and aquariums continue to evolve as conservation spaces?”
The conference will bring together speakers from diverse fields to challenge traditional thinking and inspire new ideas. A key area of focus will be reimagining conservation through the lens of First Nations people, acknowledging the critical role that Indigenous knowledge plays in protecting biodiversity.
“We will be thinking about how First Nations people would like to see conservation occurring where they live and working to ensure their voices are part of the conservation conversation,” says Fifield.
Another important theme of the conference is leadership succession. As the zoo and aquarium sector looks to the future, WAZA is also committed to fostering the next generation of leaders. “We will have a session focused on emerging leaders, looking at how we can empower them to learn from the past and be well-positioned for the future,” says Zordan.
This emphasis on emerging leadership reflects WAZA’s forward-looking approach, ensuring that the organisation and its members are well-prepared to tackle future challenges.
The future of WAZA
Looking ahead at WAZA’s long-term goals and how the organisation might evolve over the next decade, Fifield says:
“What I would like to see in the next decade is us measuring our impact as progressive zoos and aquariums. We need to understand what we’re doing for species conservation and how we’re impacting local communities, as well as how we’re improving the planet’s health for everybody. How do we measure that? That will be quite a challenge, but I’d like to see how we could collaborate more with other conservation agencies.”
It’s also essential for the voice of good and progressive zoos and aquariums to be heard, she adds:
“We’re uniquely placed because very few organisations are at that sweet spot between community and conservation. So, we need to make more of that in terms of what we can bring to the table with our scientific knowledge, with the tools we have around our information management systems, all of these things we keep buried away; we need to be much louder and prouder about the things that we can do and what we can offer around species impact.”
Redefining excellence in zoos and aquariums
According to Zordan, WAZA is constantly redefining what excellence is for zoos and aquariums. Now, he wants the Association to continue its efforts to become truly global and inclusive:
“Slowly, we’re becoming a more global Association and having more representation. We have a large global north representation, and that is lovely. But we also want to have our global south well represented. In the past years, we have been trying to make that happen. We need to be more patient to see the full results. But I hope we keep that in mind and manage to be fully representative.”
WAZA’s conservation, animal welfare, and sustainability work positions it as a global leader in the zoo and aquarium industry. As WAZA’s Annual Conference approaches, it promises to be a pivotal event in shaping the future of zoos and aquariums and ensuring they remain at the forefront of conservation efforts worldwide.
For more information about the 79th WAZA Annual Conference or to register for the event, please click here.
