Earthwatch and HSBC

Earthwatch and HSBC have worked together for almost two decades, empowering HSBC employees to become sustainability leaders and adapt business culture to support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Earthwatch has engaged more than 8,000 HSBC employees as Citizen Science Leaders with FreshWater Watch across 36 cities worldwide. Employees have collected over 17,000 water quality data points, providing important evidence to inform freshwater management and policy. In 2017, Earthwatch and HSBC launched a global training and research programme, to equip HSBC employees with knowledge of critical environmental issues and how this connects to the sustainability ambitions of the bank. To date, more than 1,100 employees have been trained and have contributed over 50,000 data points to local scientific research on urban climate resilience.

WaterAid Summary

The HSBC Water Programme's far-reaching impact has provided 1.72 million people with clean water and over 2.7 million with sanitation, accelerating change over eight years in six focus countries – Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Ghana and Nigeria. Building on the success of the initial five-year HSBC Water Programme launched 2012, HSBC and WaterAid launched a new three year project to deliver essential water and sanitation services in apparel factories and nearby communities in Bangladesh and India. Together, HSBC and WaterAid continue to drive action towards a shared ambition of a sustainable future – focusing on the sustainability of global supply chains in the apparel sector and the well-being of workers, As a leading global trade bank, HSBC recognises its unique role in supporting a shift to sustainability in global supply chains, which this project will support. As well as improving living and working conditions, this funding will enable WaterAid to pilot test metrics as part of the wider Business Case for WASH project, which aims to provide evidence of the business benefits and financial value of WASH interventions.

WWF Summary

WWF has been working on freshwater conservation in five river basins – the Ganges, Mara, Mekong, Pantanal and Yangtze – over eight years of a programme funded by HSBC. WWF has been working in partnership with HSBC for 18 years, most recently as part of the HSBC Water Programme. The five river basins WWF worked in as part of the HSBC Water Programme are collectively home to more than a billion people and are some of the planet’s most biodiverse areas. The Ganga, Mara, Mekong, Pantanal and Yangtze river basins are in many ways representative of the problems facing freshwater ecosystems worldwide. Freshwater ecosystems and human societies are now interdependent. WWF’s approaches in the five HSBC Water Programme river basins reflected this mutual reliance and involved working with governments, companies and local communities both to protect freshwater ecosystems and to ensure that freshwater resources continue to deliver benefits to human societies, their communities and businesses.