Partnership with

The partnership with BirdLife will support 

Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050

‘To reduce the environmental impact as close to zero as possible

and realise a net positive impact.’

BirdLife International and Toyota Motor Corporation have run two projects together – one ongoing, and one completed in 2019.

Car Donation Program (2016 - present)

In 2016, BirdLife International and Toyota Motor Corporation launched a five-year project to support vital conservation work for globally threatened species, in which Toyota donates cars to BirdLife Partner organizations. These vehicles are used to ensure effective and efficient delivery of conservation projects – targeting species whose habitats can be accessed only through rough terrain.

So far, eight cars have been donated to BirdLife Partners. Check out the links below to see how the donated cars are accelerating our Partners’ work.

2016: Pronatura Sur (Mexico) and BirdLife South Africa

2017: SAVE Brasil (Brazil) and Viet Nature Conservation Centre (Vietnam)

2018: Burung Indonesia  and BirdLife Zimbabwe

2019: BANCA (Myanmar) and MANU (Tahiti)

2016 - 2019: PRISM (Practical Impact Assessment Methods for Small and Medium-sized Conservation Projects)

As a further commission, Toyota supported the development of PRISM (Practical Impact Assessment Methods for Small and Medium-sized Conservation Projects). This project aimed to develop guidance materials and build capacity for evaluating the impacts of small and medium-sized conservation projects. Evaluating both the positive and negative impacts generated by conservation projects is essential for enabling practitioners to learn from experience, make informed decisions and effectively communicate project results. However, existing evaluation methods are often unsuitable for small and medium-sized projects, which are tend to have limited capacity and resources to dedicate to evaluation.

With Toyota’s support, we expanded and accelerated the development of PRISM. Toyota supported the overall coordination of the project, as well as pilot evaluations for the projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Africa. These pilot evaluations provided valuable feedback to improve the guidance and training materials developed by PRISM and provided useful case studies to illustrate good evaluation practice.

Next, we coordinated the capacity building of project practitioners and promoted wide use of PRISM among multiple sectors, including NGOs and donors. The first training session for NGOs was held in June 2018 in UK, where participants learned the fundamental concept of PRISM and how they can apply PRISM to their projects. We also held a side event at CBD-COP14 to promote the toolkit. In addition, we developed training materials with which users could become better-positioned to apply impact evaluation to their projects.

Toyota is the first Japanese company to sign a Global Corporate Partnership agreement with BirdLife International. 

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