The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization and a unique membership Union, comprising both government and civil society organizations, dedicated to nature conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources. It is the world's oldest global environmental organization, with its headquarters in Gland, Switzerland.
The IUCN was founded on October 5, 1948, in Fontainebleau, France, initially as the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN). It was established in the aftermath of World War II to facilitate international cooperation for the protection of nature and natural resources. The organization's name changed to the World Conservation Union from 1990 to 2008, before reverting to the current name.
Its primary mechanism is the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, established in 1964, which is a scientifically rigorous inventory assessing the global extinction risk of species. The Red List classifies species into nine categories, such as Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable, based on criteria like population decline and geographic range. The IUCN also convenes the IUCN World Conservation Congress every four years, where its members vote on resolutions to set the global conservation agenda.
The IUCN connects to major international agreements, providing scientific and policy advice to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the World Heritage Convention, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. The IUCN Red List Index is a headline indicator for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted in 2022. A recent development is the formal adoption of the Red List of Ecosystems as a global standard, which assesses the risk of ecosystem collapse.