Air miles are being donated towards projects that benefit the environment and provide communities with opportunities to help themselves. By selecting the Living Lakes project instead of using their air miles to fly further, those on the Miles and More programme with Lufthansa and their Star Alliance partners are helping replant forests in South Africa. 10,000 air miles supports the planting and maintenance of five trees as part of the ’Indigenous Trees for Life’ project run by conservation NGO the Wildlands Conservation Trust.
In 1998 Living Lakes was established by the International Foundation for Environment and Nature’s Global Nature Fund. As a lake network, it has been promoting the conservation and restoration of wetlands, bodies of water and their surrounding ecosystems worldwide. The Wildlands Conservation Trust forms part of the network and its Indigenous Trees for Life Programme run in South Africa helps vulnerable communities help themselves by creating opportunities to grow and plant trees thereby contributing to the mitigation of climate change and the of protection of important ecosystems.
Udo Gattenlöhner is Executive Director for the Global Nature Fund that has facilitated the donation of over 5,000 Euros in 2009 (or 52,000 South African rands) from Miles to Help programme for planting trees. “Customers are happy to have a charitable alternative to using their air miles. Frequent travellers do not depend on their free miles and in donating to a project such as this they also become more aware of the need to conserve the environment.” Since the beginning of the programme in 2007 14,000 Euros has been donated to the project.
Philisiwe Mhlongo plants indigenous trees next to her sweet potatoes, beetroot and spinach crops next to the Mkhuze River in the KwaJobe area of northern Zululand, on the north eastern boundaries of to the Mkuze Game Reserve in KwaZulu Natal. “I bought a big pot with the first money I received. At first I planted 200 trees.” She receives two South African rands for every tree she plants, and a further one rand for every quarter that she nurtures the tree and it continues to grow.
“To grow trees helps the environment, my garden is also benefitting because trees keep the water from damaging the plants and the leaves when they fall, they become compost and help my plants to grow. I am very happy to be part of this project and we benefit a lot from it.”
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)