The Green Trust was founded in 1990 at a time when conservation agencies in this country were entrenched in exploring a new image for conservation. Although South Africa was still a few years away from free and fair elections, there was a clear consciousness amongst formal conservation agencies that bridges had to be built to millions of disenfranchised people in the country. Conservation was, at best, unknown amongst many rural communities or, at worst, tainted with an image of a white middle-class playground fiercely protected by para-military game guards.

It was only during the early nineties that concepts such as "people and parks" and "community-based conservation" began to take form and to become entrenched in policy. These were exciting times and they presented professional conservationists with exciting new challenges. The field was fresh and untested and the need simply enormous. Without doubt it presented one of the most important challenges that conservationists had yet faced.

But challenges are the stuff upon which conservation has been founded and the introduction of a new conservation fund at this time, and what is more, a fund specifically targeting community-based conservation, injected financial muscle into lofty idealism. The vision of the partners in The Green Trust, WWF-SA (the conservation organisation) and Nedbank, in both creating the trust and then strategically locating it at this cutting new edge was a significant and laudable contribution to conservation in South Africa.

Of course, none of this would have been possible if it weren’t for the astonishing enthusiasm with which South Africans greeted the advent of Nedbank Green banking products. Since inception in 1990 Nedbank has donated more than R80 million in support of nearly 150 major conservation projects. These projects have covered a significant range and diversity of environmental interventions with a focus on community-based conservation.

The Green Trust aims to:

• help save the environment;
• undertake rehabilitation where damage has occurred;
• protect natural systems, ecology and biological diversity;
• focus on community-based education and nature conservation;
• protect endangered species; and
• conserve South Africa’s forests and water resources.