Sanlam has won two of the Mail &Guardian’s Greening the Future Awards in recognition of the WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership. Sanlam became the first winner of the inaugural Sudley Adams Memorial Award. A first time entrant to the Awards, Sanlam also won in the Water Care and Management category, against formidable co-finalists, Woolworths.
The annual Awards recognise and celebrate individuals and organisations that have contributed greatly to environmental sustainability. The special Sudley Adams Memorial Award has been introduced in honour of Sudley Adams, the newspaper’s brand manager and convener of the Awards who died in May this year. According to the Mail & Guardian, the judges considered all the entries for this special Award and decided the one that best embodied Sudley’s forward-thinking vision and team spirit was the WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership.
Fiona Macleod, editor of the M&G Greening the Future supplement, said the partnership was an exemplary model for other conservation initiatives. “Sanlam’s continued support for WWF SA’s water programmes has been endorsed through the buy-in of other companies. The partnership presents win-win solutions for some of South Africa’s most pressing natural resources problems, and as such is a deserving winner of Greening the Future’s two top awards.”
Sanlam has invested over R30-million in the five-year WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership and the successive Transformative Partnership.
Launched in 2007, the partnership aims to better manage freshwater and marine resources in South Africa and focuses on using the resources of WWF and Sanlam to eliminate water scarcity. It also leverages participation of other stakeholders, including the government and other companies who have taken part in a variety of related initiatives including the Integrated Catchment Management Programme and the Marine Protected Area project.