Skip to content

Our Science

Science for Nature & People Partnership

Everyone's Prosperity Relies on Nature

Someone riding away on a horse in a wooded forest.
Altamira palm oil farm Native gallery forest on Manuelita's Altamira palm oil farm in the Colombian Llanos. © Erika Nortemann/TNC

SNAPP Partnership

Learn More

The Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP) was launched in 2013 to solve a problem: if The Nature Conservancy and other organizations were going to persuade people – businesses and governments especially – to make big investments in nature to improve human well-being, it needed to provide hard data on what the return on those investments would or wouldn’t be.

But delivering that kind of science and evidence is an expensive, complex challenge and one no organization could accomplish alone – The Nature Conservancy certainly couldn’t afford to keep that much science, policy and data management expertise on staff.

Enter SNAPP, a first-of-its-kind scientific joint venture between The Nature Conservancy, The Wildlife Conservation Society, and the University of California at Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. WCS and TNC continue to grow the partnership and its contributions.

Since inception, SNAPP has engaged hundreds of institutions and thousands of experts from around the globe through teams of scientists and stakeholders.

SNAPP selects multidisciplinary teams through a rigorous proposal process, and then provides them with funding to cover neutral meeting spaces, travel, analytical, communications and facilitation support. Dedicated postdocs and research assistants may also be hired. These tangible incentives are the “enabling conditions” that allow a team of experts from a diversity of disciplines to convene around a specific global challenge at the intersection of conservation and human well-being. Teams include academic experts, government representatives, private entities and practitioners from conservation, humanitarian, sustainable development, cultural, and spiritual organizations. These teams rapidly synthesize existing knowledge about a problem, and deliver evidence-based, scalable solutions

SNAPP teams work to find solutions to the critical challenges of climate resilience, food and freshwater, ocean sustainability, and social innovations.

Our Work with SNAPP

Data-Limited Fisheries 12 different communities that rely on fishing for food and in¬come now have inexpensive science-based tools like FishPath to help avoid over fishing. © Nick Hall
Social Implications of 30x30 SNAPP scientists plan to take a closer look at social implications of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity goal of conserving 30% of the earth by 2030. © Ami Vitale
Governing Changing Oceans SNAPP researchers are investigating how improved marine governance can guide more responsible, equitable, and effective interventions in climate-impacted oceans. © Craig Sanderson
× Data-Limited Fisheries 12 different communities that rely on fishing for food and in¬come now have inexpensive science-based tools like FishPath to help avoid over fishing. © Nick Hall
× Social Implications of 30x30 SNAPP scientists plan to take a closer look at social implications of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity goal of conserving 30% of the earth by 2030. © Ami Vitale
× Governing Changing Oceans SNAPP researchers are investigating how improved marine governance can guide more responsible, equitable, and effective interventions in climate-impacted oceans. © Craig Sanderson

Read More

TNC fisheries scientist shows her young daughter how to inspect rocks along a river.

We Can’t Save the Planet Without Women

Someday, we won’t need to highlight women in conservation. But to get to that day, we must elevate the visibility of women doing this work so that others will realize, “I can do that, too.”

TNC Chief Scientist Katharine Hayhoe

A Climate for All of Us

The Nature Conservancy’s new chief scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, shares why she cares about climate change and her fears about who will be hit hardest by its impacts.

By Katharine Hayhoe