Partnership for Environmental Protection

Sika has supported the Global Nature Fund (GNF) since 2005. As different as the company and the environmental foundation are, closer consideration of the partners reveals commonalities: a central GNF project is its Living Lakes network with the goal of protecting the world’s inland bodies of water. Sika also demonstrates strength in water protection and expresses this engagement in support of the GNF.

One of Sika’s prime competencies is the separation of structures and water sources and their mutual protection from each other. Sika’s first product, Sika-1, developed by company founder Kaspar Winkler one century ago in 1910, was a waterproofing mortar additive. Since then Sika products protect structures from permeation by water. At the same time Sika technologies make the clean and protected storage of drinking water in reservoirs possible. The GNF promotes water protection primarily through preservation and sustainable development of lakes and wetlands as drinking water sources and natural habitats.

Start of partnership in Colombia

As early as 2002 Sika supported the Fundación Humedales, a member organization of the GNF Living Lakes network. The Colombian environmental protection organization campaigns for sustainable and environment-friendly use of ‘Laguna Fúquene’ Lake. “Our goal is to preserve and re-naturalize the lake,” says Germán Andrade of Fundación Humedales. “With Sika’s support we could purchase a hectare of bordering land, the Sika Forest.”

Farmers in the region have increasingly planted exotic trees such as eucalyptus. Stemming originally from Australia, this tree grows quickly and provides considerable amounts of timber, but dries out the earth to a great depth. Therefore the Fundación Humedales planted indigenous varieties such as tropical oaks and alders. A buffer zone of reeds along the lake was protected. Native residents can thus see that these types of trees also grow well and provide an assured income when tended sustainably. “In the meantime we are investing in an information center, so that we can convince the residents of our idea of sustainable agriculture and environmental protection,” Andrade says. The environmental activists thereby also promote the idea for creating a local handicraft enterprise for producing reed baskets. “Sika is very important for us,” Andrade explains. “The company helped us get started with the donation at the outset and has been a reliable partner since.”

Network for success

Within Sika a great many good ideas come from the regional companies and are taken up by the Group. So it is with cooperation in environmental protection in Colombia. In 2005 this collaboration between Sika and the environmental protection organization graduated to a higher level: since then Sika AG supports the Global Nature Fund, the umbrella organization to the Living Lakes network. Alongside projects in lake protection in Colombia, Sika today also promotes projects in other countries such as Sri Lanka and Kenya. Networking is especially important in developing countries. In 1999 the Colombian government had planned to drain Laguna Fúquene. “It was only through the Living Lakes network that this could finally be prevented,” says Mr. Andrade. “Through this effort we gained international attention and local politicians took us and our concerns seriously.” In certain regards this is much more important than the actual environmental protection work which the organization performs.

Udo Gattenlöhner, Executive Director of the GNF, asserts: “The Living Lakes network has achieved a lot in ten years. Since we have established the network on an international plane, smaller environmental protection organizations are also receiving worldwide attention.” This strengthens their position vis-à-vis political and economic concerns, which are often more interested in exploitation of natural resources and not in their sustainable use.

In order to redirect this culture of exploitation, many environmental protection organizations conduct educational initiatives. Emace Foundation in Sri Lanka is such an example. Executive Director Ekanayake Abeyrathne says, “We have to develop a culture that emphasizes the importance of water and the lakes. To do that we explain the problems to the population, and how the people can solve them themselves. It starts with small things, such as the way they dispose of refuse, which should not be dumped into the lake.” Educational measures are primarily carried out together with schools. “Our educational efforts are already showing their first successes,” Abeyrathne says with some pleasure. “In some of the nearby schools, environment clubs have been formed in the meantime and the pupils are becoming active.”

Sustainably into the future

Successes such as these please Sika as well. “In addition to this engagement it is very important for us,” says CEO Ernst Bärtschi, “that we with our products make contributions to careful management of resources. We invest in research for this. In building with Sika concrete additives we reduce water consumption. Our grinding aids also reduce energy consumption in concrete factories, and thereby the emission of CO2.”