In the early 2000s, the wine industry was growing rapidly and the vineyard footprint was expanding into highly-threatened conservation-worthy habitats. 

This spurred the start of a unique and powerful partnership between the conservation sector and the wine industry because the wine farm owners are the custodians of the land. They are the ones who can ensure that they farm in harmony with nature and ensure that the natural areas are protected so as to continue providing essential natural services. 

With a changing climate and ever increasing input costs, there is also a need to collaborate beyond farm gates to address shared risks and opportunities such as clearing river catchments of water-thirsty alien vegetation as well as preventing wildfires. 

WWF provides advisory support to eligible and committed wine farms as part of a biodiversity and water stewardship programme and offers recognition to those who are committed to farming with nature, not against it.

Through a voluntary membership model, WWF works with the environmental leaders in SA’s wine industry, known as the Conservation Champions. These landowners commit to biodiversity-friendly and regenerative farming practices, conserve their natural areas and continually improve their water and energy efficiencies. 

WWF supports these farms in their environmental efforts by co-developing detailed environmental management plans, setting tangible targets and helping them to prioritise actions to address their most pressing envionmental risks.

WWF's work also supports the existing wine industry environmental certification scheme and this, in turn, is jointly marketed through industry bodies under the Integrated Production of Wine (IPW) sustainability seal, which one can see on the neck of most wine bottles.

In exchange for their commitment to nature and adhering to WWF's high standards, the Conservation Champions can use the distinctive sugarbird and protea logo on their wine bottles so consumers can make an informed choice to support our environmental wine leaders!

As well as working closely with 60 Conservation Champions, we also engage with conservation partners, government, wine industry bodies, retailers and consumers.

The programme was initiated in 2004 and was originally called the Biodiversity and Wine Initiative (BWI). Over the subsequent decade, the BWI team worked with over 250 landowners and cellars to set up their environmental management plans and put systems in place to meet market requirements through the IPW certification scheme.
 
By 2015, over 90% of the South African wine industry was able to certify their wine as being environmentally friendly through the BWI and IPW partnership. With limited resources, the WWF programme then re-structured to focus exclusively on working with and supporting the industry environmental leaders – WWF’s Conservation Champions.

1. This unique partnership raised the awareness of the natural biodiversity and has catalysed behaviour change towards more sustainable farming practices within the wine growing regions of South Africa. 
2. Over 90% of SA’s wine industry has embedded environmentally responsible farming practices into their business as represented in IPW’s sustainability seal. 
3. The SA wine industry has received international recognition as leaders in the global wine sector for demonstrating the balance between nature and farming. 
4. The Conservation Champions are implementing regenerative farming practises and are committed to conserving previously un-protected and critically endangered ecosystems. In doing this they are creating and maintaining healthy ecosystems which provide crucial ecosystem services such as increased flow of freshwater, healthy soil and clean air. In addition, these natural ecosystems provide habitat for many rare and endangered species which if left unprotected may be lost forever.      
5. By creating the Conservation Champion logo, consumers can easily recognise and choose to support the environmental leaders with every wine purchase and when choosing to visit farms.