To end 2023, we are thrilled to share with you a guest blog from Tracey Butler, Corporate Partnerships Manager at our longstanding environmental partner World Land Trust (WLT), the international conservation charity that protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats. Working through a network of partner organisations around the world, WLT funds the creation of reserves and provides permanent protection for habitats and wildlife, from Colombia to Armenia to Vietnam. Read on to learn more about WLT, and its 16 year partnership with Nikwax…
At World Land Trust, our mission is to protect the world’s most threatened habitats and species. We do this through partnerships with local organisations across the world, supporting projects that directly preserve and restore crucial habitats through our conservation programmes. We are extremely proud that one of our longest-standing corporate relationships is with Nikwax. We have received their unwavering support since beginning our partnership journey with them in 2007, and their founder Nick Brown was a WLT Trustee from 2015 to 2021.
Having recognised the importance of businesses tackling the global crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, Nikwax were early adopters of our Carbon Balanced programme, which safeguards carbon-rich forest ecosystems against deforestation. The thriving, intact forests WLT protects with contributions to the programme not only fight climate change, but supply clean air, soil, and water whilst creating havens for endangered wildlife. Nikwax took steps to measure and reduce their carbon footprint, before then committing to offsetting their remaining unavoidable emissions. But Nikwax didn’t stop there. Taking their exceptional commitment even further, they offset their past carbon emissions of their UK operations and manufacturing processes, all the way back to their foundation over 40 years ago.
Alongside Carbon Balanced, WLT supports partner projects with our flagship ‘Buy an Acre’ programme. This funds the purchase of irreplaceable land, often home to species on the very brink of extinction. Damaged ecosystems can be restored with ‘Plant a Tree’, breathing life back into fragmented forests. Whilst ‘Keepers of the Wild’ employs experienced rangers from local communities to patrol, monitor and manage the protected areas. Supporting a broad range of our partners is the Action Fund, which allows us to provide essential resources to take immediate action whenever and wherever it is needed.
Furthering their outstanding support of our work, Nikwax match their Carbon Balanced contributions with donations to our Action Fund. Alongside fighting forest fires, flooding, and landslides, over the years, the Action Fund has helped us reach countless milestones. From the revival of Caucasian Leopards in the forests of Armenia, to establishing a biological corridor for Elephants in Northeast India, to a sanctuary for tropical birds in the mountains of Ecuador. Through long-lasting partnerships like ours, businesses can see the extraordinary long-term impact their support of our projects has for the natural world.
‘We are so delighted to have worked in partnership with Nikwax for many years. Their incredible support includes being an early adopter of our Carbon Balanced programme to address their unavoidable emissions from the start of their operations. Additionally, their support of our Action Fund has delivered incredible impact across many WLT projects around the world, benefitting biodiversity and local communities’. Tracey Butler, Corporate Partnerships Manager, World Land Trust.
WLT’s most recent project is our autumn appeal: ‘Colombia’s Forests of Mist’. With the help of our supporters, we will protect and expand the Guanacas Reserve, a valuable area of cloud forest in the mountains of Colombia’s Antioquia region. This project will provide sustainable livelihoods, directly benefitting local communities and creating a sense of stewardship towards the land on which they have lived for generations.
WLT’s network of partners is essential to the success of our mission. Since our relationship with Nikwax began in 2007, our conservation partnerships have grown from 8 to 52. Our collective community enables us to address global challenges by providing financial resources, support, and networks to which we would not otherwise have access. It is deeply inspiring to have the loyalty of so many incredible companies dedicated to making meaningful change. Thanks to support such as this, over the past 30 years, WLT has been able to directly fund and co-fund the protection of over 6 million acres, safeguarding the thousands of species living within them, and plant nearly 2.75 million trees.
As a charity, we want to accomplish even more in the future – we are looking forward with a 5-year strategy to strengthen our impact safeguarding biodiversity. We are on the precipice of a critical moment in history for the planet. With biodiversity loss putting us amid a sixth mass extinction event and climate change altering weather, oceans and landscapes like never before, only by working together can we safeguard our future. To reverse biodiversity loss and stabilise the climate, the “Global Safety Net” of protected land must increase from 15% to 50%. Together, with the invaluable support of partners like Nikwax, we can expand our collective impact towards reaching this goal.
You can learn more about WLT’s future projects by signing up to our monthly ebulletin.
