HSBC announces US$100 million program to combat climate change world-wide

HSBC has created a five-year, US$100 million partnership to respond to the urgent threat of climate change world-wide with the support of The Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and WWF.

Speaking at the London news conference to launch the programme, Sir David Attenborough, one of the world’s best known broadcasters and a pioneer of the nature documentary, said, “As we increase the production of greenhouse gases, we face the very real prospect of causing irreversible damage to the Earth’s more fragile eco-systems. We are not powerless if we act now, collectively and decisively. We can significantly reduce the causes of climate change and greatly improve the chances of safeguarding for future generations the spectacular diversity of life on Earth.”

HSBC Group Chairman Stephen Green said, “The HSBC Climate Partnership will achieve something profoundly important. By working with four of the world’s most respected environmental organizations and creating a ‘green taskforce’ of thousands of HSBC employees worldwide, we believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change. Over the next five years HSBC will make responding to climate change central to our business operations and at the heart of the way we work with our clients across the world.”

The HSBC Climate Partnership will:

• help some of the world’s great cities — Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai — respond to the challenge of climate change;
• create ‘climate champions’ worldwide who will undertake field research and bring back valuable knowledge and experience to their communities;
• conduct the largest ever field experiment on the world’s forests to measure carbon and the effects of climate change;
• andhelp protect some of the world’s major rivers — including the Amazon, Ganges, Thames, and Yangtze — from the impacts of climate change.

HSBC’s US$100 million partnership — including the largest donations to each of these charities and the largest donation ever made by a British company — has significant program targets and offers transformational support for the environmental charities. The donation will help to deliver increased capacity, help the charities to expand across new countries and research sites, and increase their access to more people.

The HSBC Climate Partnership builds upon ‘Investing in Nature’, the Group’s previous US$50 million, five-year eco-partnership which concluded in 2006. The program saw the Group partner with Botanical Gardens Conservation International, Earthwatch, and WWF, saving more than 12,000 plant species from extinction, training 200 scientists, sending 2,000 HSBC employees on conservation research projects world-wide, and protecting and better managing three of the world’s largest rivers — including part of the Yangtze River in China.