On the one hand, these meetings have enabled the staff to understand the needs and concerns of the partners. On the other, the meetings provide an opportunity for IUCN to give these key supporters its perspective on global and local issues. IUCN needs to encourage a greater environmental commitment by the corporate sector. During the triennium the Union built much closer contact with business and environment groups, in particular with the Business Council for Sustainable Development. Strengthening and Integrating the Programme IUCN seeks to develop a single, integrated programme, designed on the basis of proposals from Regional and Country Offices, Commissions and Headquarters, and discussed with funding agencies before approval by the Council.
Feedback tends to be a weak point.
The Union is good at devising policies and technical solutions to problems. It is good at setting up field projects to test and demonstrate these policies, as the reports in the following pages show. But far more needs to be done to analyze and learn from experience, and to use the lessons to guide future efforts. Special attention also has to be paid to communications planning, so as to articulate what changes in behaviour are sought, whose behaviour should change, and to what purpose. Only when these issues are clear can the messages be agreed and the forms of communication be designed.