The World Conservation Union is a global organisation made up of many thousands of members. These members fall into roughly three groups: governments, non-governmental organisations, and individuals. It seeks to work with all of these constituents to promote conservation and sustainable activities in the world. It is influential on global and national policies in these areas through a partnership approach.
 
Obviously an organisation of this scale cannot operate effectively without many different "bodies" delivering different elements of its work. One type of body is the country committee. A country committee is intended as a focus for the national government and those organisations, both governmental and non-governmental, and individuals who are members of IUCN and who reside in that country (and in the UK’s case, its Overseas Territories also). 
 
The UK Committee works as a convening body, aiming to bring together members from across the IUCN spectrum and from outside in order to share information and to discuss approaches to influencing conservation policy. The Committee has a Chair, elected for a three-year term, and the Committee’s business is managed by an Executive (ExCo) that is elected annually. The Committee itself is open to anyone who qualifies as described above. A small number of members (c.35) who are subscribing members to IUCN internationally, also subscribe to the UK Committee in order to fund a secretariat and to finance meetings where issues can be discussed.

 
The Committee seeks to influence policy at a very strategic level, for example the "greening" of the Common Agricultural Policy. This influence is one of many that would, in this example, be brought to bear on many different recipients by many different players. Governments, non-governmental organisations, academic groups, consumer groups, farmers lobbies etc., would also all be seeking to influence national governments, the European Commission and Parliament, and the media.
 
In summary, the UK Committee of IUCN is a broad partnership working to further the conservation of natural resources in the UK, Europe and globally. It does this by building alliances with others and providing the opportunity for sharing experiences in order to focus policy advice efforts. It has a formal constitution that governs its actions, with an elected Executive to run its business.
 
Constitution

 

Rules of Operation (PDF)