In 2008, the CARE-WWF Alliance emerged as a major strategic partnership between two international non-governmental organizations seeking to tackle the linked challenge of poverty and natural resource degradation. From the start, the mission of the Alliance was to test the idea that empowering some of the poorest and most vulnerable women and communities on the planet to engage in sustainable livelihoods and natural resource governance could improve their wellbeing and conserve globally important biodiversity.

A decade after its inception, the Alliance used existing monitoring data to support an evaluation that assessed the social impacts of the integrated conservation and development program. The design of the final evaluation was constrained by a baseline intended for project monitoring rather than impact assessment, while depth of analysis was constrained by time.