How WWF Forests Forward maps its stakeholders with explorer.land

WWF Forests Forward is the ngo’s global corporate engagement programme that partners with companies to drive responsible forest management, restoration, and sustainable supply chains. By connecting business action with landscape-level conservation, the programme aims to ensure that forests contribute to climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, and community well-being worldwide.

Key Highlights

Sponsor Empowerment

Each sponsor has its own dedicated view showing where funds are allocated, progress achieved, and impact metrics reached — fostering long-term engagement and trust.

360° Visibility

WWF now has a single global dashboard to monitor all sponsors and landscapes in real time — reducing manual reporting and improving coordination.

Verified Transparency

Integration with WWF’s internal systems and monitoring milestones ensures traceable, up-to-date data, transforming how corporate impact is reported and communicated.

The Challenge

As the programme scaled across multiple landscapes involving many actors — local communities, implementing NGOs, government agencies, private-sector sponsors/donors — WWF encountered a number of coordination and transparency issues:

Fragmented data and information: spreadsheets, static maps, disconnected systems.
Lack of transparent reporting for Sponsors: sponsors often had limited visibility into where their funds were going and what was the real-time status on the ground.
Lack of a centralized platform: for both the local actors and stakeholders see progress, attribution and impact.

For WWF and its partners the challenge was to create a single source of truth, accessible to internal and external stakeholders, that combined spatial mapping, field-data, progress tracking, sponsor attribution, and storytelling.

The Solution

To meet these needs, WWF Forests Forward adopted explorer.land as its digital hub for landscape visualization, sponsor engagement, and transparent reporting.

Through explorer.land’s Sponsor Management feature, WWF now maintains a global overview of all sponsors and their corresponding projects — while each sponsor gains a dedicated view of their specific impact: areas supported, milestones reached, and geolocated stories from their funded sites.

The platform is fully integrated with WWF’s internal systems, synchronizing custom data, impact metrics, and monitoring milestones via API connections. This ensures that every funder knows exactly what they invest in and what the current status is, with dynamic updates replacing static reports.

For teams on the ground, explorer.land enables storytelling and data entry directly from the fields; for sponsors, it transforms those inputs into transparent, map-based narratives — bridging the gap between technical monitoring and stakeholder engagement.

explorer.land features used

Interactive Map

Visualizes all WWF Forests Forward landscapes and projects, offering a clear geographic view of restoration and management activities

Thematic Data Layers

Displays forest condition, restoration zones, community forests, and deforestation alerts — helping users contextualize impact.

Sponsor Management

Centralized interface for WWF to track all sponsors, and for each sponsor to see their own portfolio and measurable results in a dedicated private view.

Custom API

Seamlessly integrates WWF’s internal monitoring systems and databases, ensuring automated, real-time data flow and transparent reporting.

The Results

Using explorer.land, WWF has turned complex forest data into an intuitive, map-based experience for all stakeholders.

Sponsors now see their contribution in context — how, where, and why their funding matters.
Field partners can update progress directly, improving timeliness and data reliability.
WWF gains a coherent, real-time overview across global landscapes, reducing manual reporting and enhancing accountability.

This new level of geo-transparency strengthens trust between WWF, sponsors, and local partners, while enabling the Forests Forward programme to scale confidently across landscapes and corporate partnerships.