It gives me great pleasure to be the current Chairman of WESSA as it celebrates its 85 th Birthday. What incredible endurance – borne primarily out of passion – a deep passion, and calling, of so many, over so many years.

Tonight is, just this one special time, all about WESSA – this fine organization that is one of the oldest and largest membership-based environmental organizations on the continent.

Over the years there have been several landmark achievements:

•  1926: WESSA played a critical role in the proclamation of the Kruger National Park .

•  1937: After 8 years of petitioning by WESSA, the Mountain Zebra Park was established.

•  1948: WESSA was a founder member of the IUCN (the International Union for the Conservation of Nature)

•  1980: WESSA produced the first Environmental Conservation Strategy for South Africa (the first NGO in the world to do so.)

•  1995: WESSA established the Drakensberg Wetland Project

•  2001: South Africa , through WESSA, became the first country outside of Europe to run the Blue Flag Beach programme .

•  2003: The Eco-schools Programme was launched in SA and now has over 1000 participating schools across the country.

•  2008: WESSA became a founder member of the Climate Action Partnership

More recently:

•  WESSA was again appointed as the Africa Coordinator for the International Training Programme in Education for Sustainable Development . This year the training programme is supporting capacity building in South Africa , Zimbabwe , Tanzania , Malawi , Bangladesh , Cambodia , India , Afghanistan and Indonesia .

•  WESSA Share-Net won the 2011 Europcar Green Office Week Competition.

•  WESSA is currently developing 11 centres for sustainability technologies.

•  More than 10 000 teachers, parents and school administrators and 20 000 young people participate enthusiastically in the Eco-Schools programme each year.

•  The WESSA Energy & Sustainability (E&S) Programme continues to achieve high accolades. In the past 6 months it was a finalist at the Volvo Adventure awards in Sweden . It has also won an Africa wide award, in Kenya , for innovative partnerships in service delivery.

•  The WESSA E&S programme has also been a winner in the prestigious “eta” , national energy awards, for a record 7 years in a row!

•  There has been a massive increase in media exposure for WESSA.  (by way of example over 200 magazine and newspaper mentions in July alone)

•  WESSA was the preferred NGO that the Department of Environmental Affairs proposed to be part of the itinerary of the Swedish Minister of Environment when he was on his climate change and biodiversity mission in South Africa ;

•  WESSA is also the preferred environmental NGO to co-host, with the American based Wildlife Society, the IV International Wildlife Management Congress to be held in July 2012 in Durban .

Fantastic achievements WESSA! – I am proud of you.

It's a troubled world we find ourselves in. Never before have we been so connected, and yet so disconnected – communication takes place through sms, BBM, facebook and mixit. Whilst the world hurtles towards outcomes that are going to alter or end life as we know it, levels of apathy abound.

Just pertaining to water alone, we in SA have lost 50% of our wetlands – (the countries kidneys); 82 municipalities no longer have water engineers meaning that in many cases pure sewerage is flowing into water supplies; in the Vaal Catchment area; 50 000 tons of uranium from mines seeped into water supplies just last year alone, causing acid mine water which is highly radioactive and necessitating the evacuation already of people on the west rand. The EU is already refusing vegetables growing along the Vaal as being too toxic unless the farmers have their own purification works. Stark realities loom, and yet people are more inclined to watch mindless TV shows of the most base or pathetic themes, or expend huge amounts of passion in watching sport, whilst real issues facing them are scarcely given a thought.

Added to this, WESSA finds itself operating in an international and national financial context that is clearly one of the most severe economic crises the world has faced since the great depression of the 1930's. The levels of debt are unprecedented in the world economy, and unemployment, together with country, and individual debt, are threats ever present and seem set to continue for the foreseeable future. At a time when materialism is still being marketed as the source of happiness and messages of consumption continue unabated, we realize that even those that point to economic recovery are pointing towards returning to an economic system that in itself is not ultimately sustainable. Coupled with population growth, the world is stressed.

I am not a scientist, I am a business strategist and in fact my doctorate is in law, in case you wondered. My math is dubious to say the least but even I realize that the simple equation of limited resources minus (increasing consumption and increasing populations) = bad news. You see, 20% of the world's population consumes 80% of its resources. And the 80% low consumers want very much to be like the 20%. When brains, such as Steven Hawking, start saying that we don't need a Plan B, but a Planet B, then I start getting worried.

WESSA has for 85 years taken a stand to do something about this. We have as our Vision:

To achieve a South Africa which is wisely managed by all, to ensure long-term environmental sustainability. To this end, we promote public participation in caring for the Earth.

Bearing in mind how society in general has stopped caring about so many things, we took a decision that we had to reduce our reliance on just fund raising, sponsorships and membership fees, as these could minimize, and instead adopt a model of becoming a highly effective, environmental project implementation organization.

This would attract funding for implementing high impact projects for government and corporates who would understand that we can do these projects better than they could, base them around our Mission, and which would provide us with sustainable income to do the unfunded interventions that we are so well known for.

We have been largely successful in this transition, securing increased funding for projects whilst at the same time ‘improving our internal processes and procedures to ensure higher levels of efficiency - and we wish to continue on this trajectory. But we have to be pro-active, nimble, decisive, and continually work smarter.

More specifically on projects, almost R400mil of project proposals were submitted over the past year for funding, with R60mil now already approved. Of the projects that have been decided upon, almost 40% of the outcomes have been approvals thus far.  R240mil of proposals are still pending, several of which appear to be very hopeful prospects.

WESSA as such, continues to play its role in increasing public participation in caring for the earth, and this role is growing rapidly.

Change is never easy, in fact it's full of fears, uncertainties, discomfort and sometimes strong opposition; we are after all creatures of habit and many do find change something they instinctively avoid – but that been said, we have come a long way; we still have a long way to go.

At WESSA, we experience good times, hard times, laughs and stress, and people coming and going, but we continue to grow in influence, and in the current financial crisis the world finds itself in, growing markedly. For this, I, as Chairman, am truly proud of WESSA, and I wish to thank Board, EXCO, management and all staff for their hard work, commitment and team spirit.

A very big thank you to those external stakeholders, the government, local and international funders and those corporate citizens who are savvy enough to look beyond just the single bottom line and have partnered with this fine organization, WESSA.

To those of you here tonight, thank you. As Cousteau says “It's all about connectedness -when we address saving the environment, we are addressing saving human life too”. Those here tonight, please take this message with you into your circles of influence. Change comes from millions of little actions and always starts with making people aware.

When the machinery of excellence and effectiveness starts to turn, it becomes something so powerful it changes whole contexts and paradigms and this is certainly starting to happen. It is the role of the leadership of WESSA to ensure that this trajectory continues. We are at the forefront – and we will steadfastly maintain our course.

No more will it be a begging bowl to find partners in saving the earth – WESSA, and its kind around the world, are doing possibly the most important work for the future of this earth, and its time due recognition was given in this regard.

I read recently that one translation of the word 'sin' means ‘ to have lost your way, gone astray, your thinking and actions have gone awry'. This then made sense of the scripture that the ‘sins of the forefathers shall be visited upon their children and their children's children'. Each generation will live in a world left behind and created by their parents ‘errant ways'.

Man is a unique creature – we are the only creatures that consume more than we need. It takes a conscious disciplined decision deep within each individual, and guts, to give back to this world. Man has made the problem; will you stand with us to help rectify it?

I thank you, all of you – I personally am extremely proud of WESSA. I look forward to the road ahead – who says life is not interesting!

Dr. Richard Lewis

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD