HSBC to mobilise 'green taskforce' to tackle climate change

HSBC has announced a new five-year US$100 million programme to help tackle the causes and impacts of climate change.

By James Kon

The bank is joining forces with The Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and WWF to form the HSBC Climate Partnership.

The partnership will mobilise HSBC employees worldwide into a "green taskforce" to address the issue of climate change.

This new partnership will build upon the good work done in HSBC's "Investing in Nature" programme, which concluded last year, after five years, and help train 200 scientists, send 2,000 HSBC employees, including those from Brunei on conservation research projects and help save 12,000 plant species from extinction.

"The HSBC Climate Partnership will achieve something profoundly important," said HSBC Group Chairman Stephen Green.

"Over the next five years, HSBC will respond to climate change to our business operations and intrinsic to the way we work with our clients across the world," he added.

The work being carried out will focus on four key areas, namely to make some of the world's biggest cities such as Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai cleaner and greener, to create climate champions across the world who will participate in field research and return to share their knowledge and experience with their communities, to conduct the largest-ever field experiment on the world's forests to measure carbon and the effects of climate change, to help protect four of the world's major rivers like the Amazon, Ganges, Yangtze and Thames from the impact of climate change.

The US$100 million commitment that HSBC is contributing to the partnership marks the largest-ever charitable donation given by a UK-based company.

The funds will allow charities to get more things done, in more places, and to get more people involved than there had ever been in the past.

"By working with four of the world's most respected environmental organisations and creating a "green taskforce" of thousands of HSBC employees worldwide, we believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change," said Stephen Green.