CCNet evolved from The Nature Conservancy’s Efroymson Coaches Network and was chartered in 2009 by the Conservancy, WWF, Greening Australia and Foundations of Success to help meet the growing need to train and support coaches of the Open Standards. CCNet aims to improve conservation by empowering people to develop, implement, evaluate, adapt and share effective strategies that achieve tangible conservation results benefitting both people and nature all over the world. As of 2016 CCNet includes over 500 trained coaches from 60 countries, six continents and more than 160 organizations. Formal franchises cover North America, Europe, Australia, China, Mongolia, Indonesia & Malaysia, South Asia, Pacific Islands, Africa, MesoAmerica, and South America. In addition, a “Teaching Adaptive Management” group helps organize the teaching of the Open Standards in universities around the world. Coaches not only teach practitioners and teams the basic principles of the Open Standards; they also help teams identify strategies, develop measures, explicitly articulate and capture their uncertainties, and encourage on-going assessment and continuity of effort. Coaches link practitioners with other support services and identify peer projects where project leaders can find additional review and support for similar challenges. In this way, coaches have supported thousands of conservation projects.
In addition to providing coach trainings around the World, CCNet keeps a Listserve where practitioners interact virtually; produces a bi-annual edition of CCNet News where coaches share news in their own words; maintains content on a website; and hosts an in-person global community gathering every two years called the CCNet Rally where peers teach peers and where adaptations and method improvements are shared.
While CbD 2.0 is new to everyone, and departs in some important ways from the Open Standards, CCNet offers access to coaches within and beyond the Conservancy who can teach practitioners and teams the basic principles of applicable aspects of the Open Standards. A list of CCNet coaches can be found here.