'We are committed to a low-carbon economy'

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: The environment is changing everywhere. Disappearing forests, water scarcity, food security, drought, floods and earthquakes are a matter of everyday routine. Many are making efforts to arrest environmental damage around us and corporates too are waking up to this reality and launching their own initiatives. The key to the success of corporate engagement with the environment lies in how companies own these programmes internally and make their own business sustainable in the process. 

HSBC has been working on a number of environmental issues for years now. We were the first bank to achieve carbon neutrality in October 2005 and our offices around the world have annual targets on energy, water consumption and waste recycling. We engage our employees in all our environment activities and see a huge participation from colleagues during World Environment Day celebrations on June 5 every year.

Parallel to our efforts in managing our own environment footprint, we believe that it is important for us to influence environmental sensitivity amongst our customers as well. Thus our responsible lending policies ensure that we work with our customers to create sound environmental performance before financing any of the projects in environmentally sensitive sectors. Organisations working on a number of environmental issues now have the opportunity to unite under the climate change banner as well as manage individual issues pertaining to forests, wildlife, bio-diversity, agriculture, water and many more, since the changing climate has an impact on all. 

Realising this uniqueness, HSBC has structured its work on environment and sustainability under the broad theme of climate change to enable us to impact all issues and create positive and measurable difference. We thus help communities manage their water resources so that they are better prepared for temperature extremes and drought. Through the ‘HSBC Young Rangers Programme’, we help children in Mumbai learn more about the environment and take small steps to bring about a meaningful change. To ensure climate change engagement with a wider set of stakeholders, recently on the eve of Earth Day (April 22), we committed resources and our emerging expertise in managing climate change to create the first public private partnership with the Ministries of Science & Technology and of Earth Sciences of the Government of India. Called the Earth Sciences Forum, this partnership will help industry, NGOs, government and concerned individuals to join hands to find practical solutions to climate change problems. 

We have further intensified our commitment to the environment by undertaking to work with the SME sector to improve their understanding of a low-carbon economy and creating sustainable enterprises with due attention to community and the environment. Globally, we are working hard to customise financial instruments to invest in climate change. The HSBC Climate Change Fund and the HSBC Global Climate Change Benchmark Index are some of the steps we have taken in this direction. 

All of this brings me back to my opening remarks on the need for complete commitment. Corporates will need to travel the full distance, in the process ensuring that they cover all touch points throughout their organisations and stakeholders. It is very important to align corporate support to this cause. Our commitment to change, indeed, to climate change, is a reflection of this thinking. We believe our work on the environment will ensure a healthy economy, better living for communities and ultimately, an environment in which business and people will prosper.