Eco-Conservation Initiatives
Eco-Conservation Initiatives (ECI) is a Non-Profit / Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) working from the mountainous north to the coastal south covering all types of landscapes including mountains, forests, glaciers, deserts, plains, rivers, and wetlands, etc. The number of its field units, as well as staff strength, varies from 5 to 35 depending upon its projects in progress. ECI is primarily concerned with grassroots groups including both the men and women in rural as well as urban settlements. The sole objective for the establishment of ECI is to widely implement environment-friendly approaches for the cause of ecosystem restoration and climate-smart sustainable development taking into account the aspects of transboundary environmental conservation with a focus on adapting to and mitigating climate change impacts taking along communities. It has the ambitions to be an efficient, useful, and dynamic part of an atlas of the biosphere over the years encompassing our forests, wetlands, mountains, glaciers, rivers, and deserts in service to humans and all life on the planet. In 2005, the organization won the certification award from Pakistan Center for Philanthropy (PCP) to maintain and standardize internal governance, financial management, and program delivery that has to be periodically updated keeping in view the changing circumstances. The prevalent apathetic condition of the underprivileged groups as well as farming communities with increasing population growth along with deteriorating state of the environment and climate change led the founding members of ECI to establish this organization. It was established to support the downtrodden and underprivileged class of society for the enhancement of the quality of their life. At their approval, ECI operates the development projects with the financial support of national as well as international donors/partner organizations including the Government of Pakistan, UNDP, UNOPS, UNICEF, USAID-CNFA/ILED, LEAD, OXFAM-GB, AKRSP-NORAD, private investors/entrepreneurs as well as investors and entrepreneurs. The organization has high market capitalization because of its expanded outreach but low revenues since its establishment due to the apparent reasons that it has been engaged in volunteering its services for its partners and clients as a non-profit entity. However, one of its major strengths lies in consistency, commitment, and dedication to its overall vision and mission. Therefore, even in the absence of any revenues, it maintained its presence on the ground by generating revenues by offering consulting services by its founding team members in their private and individual capacity. ECI has successfully built the capacity of the Sugar Industry in biological-based integrated crop and pest management and helped 25 Sugar Mills establish the bio-labs on the built-operate-transfer basis, which are running as successful programs to date by themselves. As a result, they have saved a huge amount of resources by adopting the ECI introduced ICM/IPM approach where need-based chemicals are only used as a last resort. One of the most distinguishing features of ECI is being one of the important organizations in the non-profit sector that deals with climate-smart agriculture by employing nature-based solutions where the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) / Agenda-2030 is pivotal to our approach. Giving due importance to SDGs as well as Paris Climate Agreement in all our development activities, ECI is gradually transitioning to clean energy with the aims of building nexus among Water-Energy-Food for the evolution of a healthy society under the guiding principles of climate justice. During the difficult times of Pandemic, ECI took it as an opportunity to build its capacity in remote working with the involvement of its both formal and informal members by employing the use of cutting edge Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), Internet of Things (IoTs) as well as social media platforms. Learning from the failures of several organizations that reached the climax and then fizzle out in no time, ECI believes in the sustainability on the ground as well as the sustainability of its impacts through the ripple effect. The ongoing association with Council for Inclusive Capitalism is of tremendous value to us in terms of building our outcome-based linkages and helping us in the long-term organizational sustainability with one of our core strengths of giving outputs with minimum available resources with lasting impacts in service to global commons for the benefit of people and planet.

Purpose

Promoting ecological conservation through participatory and sustainable climate-smart development by the active involvement of both the rural and urban communities taking into account UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) / Agenda-2030, and all UNFCCC's relevant global agreements and protocols.

Building a strong nexus among water-energy-food where water conservation & efficient use, clean energy, and pesticide-free food are of tremendous consideration in view of protecting one health and enhancing the quality of life. At the same time, eco and agritourism have been the added values for scaling up these efforts, building outreach, and fostering collaborations with new partners.

Azhar Qureshi

CEO, Eco-Conservation Initiatives

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