Privacy Policy

To garner your interest towards Nature-based Solutions in the UAE, whether you’d like to receive general information about the Nature-based Solutions Project, become one of our partners or would eventually like to invest in our Nature-based Solutions portfolio.

Collecting information about you and what grabs your attention allows us to work out the most efficient way to provide you with the right information.

We collect information every time you interact with us. The type and quantity of information we collect and how we use it depends on why you are providing it.

WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT

The information we may collect from the above interactions may include, but is not limited to any of the following:

• Your name, email address, company name
• We may collect your year of birth or date of birth in order to verify you are an adult as it is our policy not to market to minors
• Details of your visit to our websites, including technical information such as the IP address you use to access the website, your device, browser type and version
• Any other details which you give us including your reasons for supporting us.

In limited and specific circumstances, we might collect special categories (sensitive personal data) of information from you. These circumstances include:

• If you have been specifically asked to participate in an equal opportunities, monitoring survey or any other kind of survey initiated by us and you provide your consent for us to do so. The data will only be used for the stated purpose and kept no longer than is necessary for that purpose. Where possible we will collect the information on an anonymous basis so that you cannot be identified.

INFORMATION ON MINOR PERSONAL DATA

We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18. If You are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal data, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected personal data from anyone under the age of 18 without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to remove that information from our servers. If we need to rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your information and the UAE requires consent from a parent, we may require your parent's consent before we collect and use that information

HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION ABOUT YOU

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct Interaction: We get information directly from you, for example when you fill in our contact form, or participate in any one of our activities, events or field activations. For information on when we may collect data about you, see WHEN WE COLLECT INFORMATION.
• Address: Where possible we may use publicly available sources to keep your records up to date. This allows us to better direct our resources and efforts. With your consent, we will only use this information with third parties to be able to see your information.
• Social Media: We may obtain your personal information through your use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp or LinkedIn, depending on your settings or the privacy policies of these social media services. To changes your settings on these services, please refer to their privacy policies which will tell you how to do this.
• Third parties: In signing up for a service, you may have agreed for your data to be passed to other organisations, such as our subsidiaries, affiliates, parent companies, agents, third party sites, vendors, contractors, partners, payment facilitators, stakeholders, and governmental entities (governmental entities solely within the UAE). Where we use this data, we check that we are entitled to by reviewing the privacy notice of that third party to ensure that it informs people that their data may be passed to us.
• Desktop Research: In a very limited number of cases, we may use desk research, profiling and screening techniques to analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information relevant to you, to be able to attract lookalike audiences. We do this because it allows us to make appropriate and relevant approaches and target our resources more effectively. We may make use of additional information about you, including geo-demographic information and measures of affluence. We may on occasion use third party suppliers to undertake these activities on our behalf and provide them with your information to the extent required. Such information is compiled using publicly available data about you, for example addresses, listed directorships, social media posts, newspaper articles or typical earnings in a given industry. Collating this publicly available information helps us better understand your motivations and preferences enabling us to deliver a more targeted and relevant experience..

WHAT WE USE YOUR INFORMATION FOR

We use personal data for a number of different processing activities which includes:

• Providing you with the goods and services you have requested (events, campaigns, activities on the field, virtual activities, courses, workshops, seminars, majlises, , amongst any other in the future.)
• Keeping you up to date with the work you are supporting and the latest conservation news
• Keeping a record of your relationship with us
• Managing your communication preferences, including marketing preferences
• Understanding how we can improve our services, products or information
• Sending you tailored communications and displaying relevant adverts which we think will be of interest to you
• Sending you marketing materials including on fundraising, campaigning and events
• Inviting you to events and to take part in campaigns and support our advocacy work
• Analysing our database for statistical purposes, and to better communicate with you about things we think will be of interest. Note that this is on a generic rather than an individual level to ensure that our communications are cost effective
• In limited circumstances, analysing the personal information we collect about you and using publicly available information to better understand your interests, preferences so that we can contact you more effectively
• Sending you details of activities on this platform, events, campaigns, activities on the field, virtual activities, courses, workshops, seminars, majlises, and MOOCs and giving you information on similar services and have not opted out of receiving such information.

All of our use of personal data is in accordance with the UAE applicable law. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you, such as providing you with the service you have requested
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (as set out below).
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation
• Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending email or text message (and in some instances by phone) direct marketing communications about activities on this platform, events, campaigns, activities on the field, virtual activities, courses, workshops, seminars, majlises, and MOOCs (as detailed in section 5).

Our legitimate interests include administering your support, sending you marketing materials by phone, email and post to further understand your interests. A summary of each of these and some examples of how we may use your data in these ways on the basis of it being within our legitimate interests to do so are set out below:

• TO CONTACT YOU BY POST AND PHONE: Contacting you is vital to the way we operate – when you join us, you are joining a worldwide movement and showing your support for the environment. We want to keep in touch with you and, along with telling you how your support and engagement are contributing to our objectives,We also want to keep you up to date with the numerous activities you can get involved with. We believe it is in our legitimate interest to send you such materials by post, only when necessary, as we opt for digital communications, and to speak to you by phone, unless you have told us you prefer us not to. 

  Specific examples of processing activities under this legitimate interest include but are not limited to sending you marketing materials such as the below: 

  • Inviting you to take part in campaigns and support our advocacy work
  • Inviting you to events by email and phone
• UNDERSTANDING OUR SUPPORTERS: In order to understand you better, we undertake a number of processing activities including analysis, research, profiling and customising your experience as detailed in this policy.

  Specific examples of processing activities under this legitimate interest include:

  • Analysing our database and seeing what has worked and what hasn’t. This helps us develop our products and services, and helps inform our marketing strategy so we only send you information that we think will be of interest to you.
  • In limited circumstances, analysing the personal information we collect about you and using publicly available information to better understand your interests and preferences so that we can contact you more effectively.
  • Customising your experience and displaying more relevant information (including adverts) to you.

  If you would like more information on our uses of legitimate interests or to change our use of your personal data in this manner, please contact us.

WHAT YOU’VE REQUESTED

We will keep you up to date with the latest conservation news and updates on the Nature-based Solutions Project in the UAE. If you have shared your email address with us, then you will periodically receive updates on our latest work.

MARKETING

In addition to updates on our Nature-based Solutions Project, we may also contact you about Events such as roundtables and seminars, which we may like to invite you to.

By submitting your data, you have provided your consent on using your personal data and we may contact you through the following methods : email address, telephone number, SMS and other forms of communication (provided that you haven’t specifically told us you don’t want to receive them). 

In addition, where you have provided us your details, we may send you information about similar products, services, programmes or campaigns which we think will may be of interest to you. We will also always provide an opportunity for you to opt-out of every communication we send you about these products wherein you may unsubscribe at any time via an unsubscribe link.

THIRD PARTY FOR THEIR MARKETING

As part of our security policies, we do not sell your personal details with third parties for any marketing or commercial gain. As with other organisations, we do not undertake all of our processing activities ourselves and we appoint suppliers to facilitate our needs, hence wherever relevant, we may need to share your personal data with them.

In these cases and others, we ensure that we have a contract with the supplier whereby the supplier agrees to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only permit suppliers to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We may need to transfer your personal data to third parties as described in section 3 whether inside European Economic Area (EEA), the US or any other international regions to allow them to perform services on our behalf. In doing so, your data may be stored or otherwise processed outside of the UAE.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UAE, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards are in place:

• the country has been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data as applied within the UAE
• a specific contract with a third party which gives the same degree of protection of personal data as specified under UAE laws

SOCIAL MEDIA

Depending on your settings and the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Meta, LinkedIn, Google and Twitter, you might give us permission to access information from those accounts or services. For example, we occasionally participate in Meta’s “Custom Audiences” program which enables us to display adverts to you via Meta. Our adverts may then appear when you access Meta and on your Meta feed. For more information please read the Facebook Business page about Custom Audiences and Facebook’s Data Policy.

In other cases we will not disclose any of your personal data except in accordance with this policy, or when we have your permission, or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the UAE law requires it or to protect the rights, property and safety of us, or others. This includes disclosing your details if required to the national security agencies, authorized regulatory bodies, legal advisors and/or police.

We have appropriate physical, technical and managerial controls in place to protect your personal details. Our online forms are always encrypted and our network is protected and routinely monitored. Within our offices, only those authorized need to access your information and who are trained in handling data securely will have access to your information. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

When we use external entities to collect or process personal data on our behalf, we undertake due diligence on these entities before we contract them which sets out our expectations and requirements, including keeping and using your data securely. 

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to third party websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites will have their own cookie policies and privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Despite all of our precautions however, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. So, whilst we strive to protect your personal data and information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information or data which you disclose to us and so wish to draw your attention that you do so at your own risk.

Where we have given you (or you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential, and we ask you not to share this with anyone.

We will only keep your personal information and data for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it is collected, which may include the purpose of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. If you request that we stop sending you marketing materials, we will keep a record of your contact details and the appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request to not to be contacted by us. Therefore, we may keep some data indefinitely (for example your name, email address and phone number). In these cases, we will only retain data which is necessary for our purposes and will delete or anonymise other parts of your record. When we anonymise or delete your data, we will ensure that it is no longer identifiable to you.

You can request the details of the personal information we hold about you. If you want to access your information, please contact us.

We may need to ask you for information in order to service your request, such as confirmation of your identity, or whether there is any specific data you would like or from a specific time period. We may send you a form in order to assist you in this. 

Under the UAE applicable data protection laws you have various rights over your personal data as seen below:

• The right to be informed: You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data by us or, on our behalf, by a third party.
• The right to access: You have the right to obtain from us confirmation as to whether or not your personal data is being processed and, if so, the right to access that personal data. This right does not apply where it would adversely affect the rights and freedoms of another person.
• The right to rectification: You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate personal data and we must comply in a timely manner. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, you shall have the right to have incomplete personal data completed.
• The right to erasure: You have the right to request the erasure of your personal data, in our possession, in a timely manner.
• The right to restrict processing: You have the right to request the restriction of use of your personal data, where the data is not being used for the purpose it was collected for.
• The right to object to processing: You have the right to object at any time to our use of your personal data where that use is based on legitimate interest or the public interest. ‘ Legitimate interest’ is a lawful basis for processing personal data where (i) the use of data has a limited impact on you, (ii) you should reasonably expect us to use your data in such a way, or, (iii) where we do not deem it appropriate to contact you with disruptive consent requests.
• The right to data portability: Where you have provided personal data for us to use with your consent or as required for us to fulfil our contractual obligations to you, you have the right to receive personal data that you have provided from us in a structured, commonly used format in order for you to provide that personal data to another organisation for use as you so wish. This right does not apply where we are using the personal data to carry out a public duty (e.g. security or compliance).
• The right to complain to a supervisory authority: You have the right to submit a formal written complaint to a regulator who can resolve any complaints regarding the transfer of personal data that we cannot resolve with you directly. Please contact us in this case.
• The right to withdraw consent: In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have a compelling legitimate ground and interest to process your data.Where we have asked you for consent to process your data, you may withdraw this consent at any time by contacting us. Please note, however, that we may still be entitled to process your personal data if we have legitimate reason (other than consent) for doing so.

We may amend or update this policy at any time to take account of any changes to data protection law or any other relevant legislation. When further updates to the policy are made they will be posted on this page, so please our privacy policy regularly. Any significant changes will be notified to you.

The law that dictates how your personal information can be used is under the UAE Federal Data Protection Law No. 45 of 2021.

If you have any questions please contact our Supporter Care team using the details below: Online: [email protected]