The aim of the World Conservation Strategy is to help advance the achievement of sustainable development through the conservation of living resources. The Strategy: 1. explains the contribution of living resource conservation to human survival and to sustainable development; 2. identifies the priority conservation issues and the main requirements for dealing with them; 3. proposes effective ways for achieving the Strategy's aim.

The Strategy is intended to stimulate a more focused approach to living resource conservation and to provide policy guidance on how this can be carried out. It concentrates on the main problems directly affecting the achievement of conservation's objectives; and on how to deal with them through conservation. In particular, the Strategy identifies the action needed both to improve conservation efficiency and to integrate conservation and development.