HSBC Group has announced a five-year, $8m environmental partnership with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), whose mission is tropical rainforest ecology and other biodiversity issues, to fund the largest ever field experiment on the long-term effects of climate change and how it will affect the world’s forests.

HSBC Group chairman Stephen Green said: “We know the success of business in the long term depends on a stable environment. We believe that by supporting this research we will more fully understand the risks and business opportunities presented by climate change and the Smithsonian Institute is the best-equipped and experienced organisation of this kind to help us understand how our global environment is changing.”

Over five years and beginning in the Panama Canal, HSBC will support tropical forest research in order to introduce carbon measurement in the existing research plots. For the first time, it will compare the changes in tropical and temperate forests on a large scale and with standardised methods, in the process monitoring some three million trees representing approximately 8,000 species (more than 10 times the number of tree species in all of Europe and North America combined). The research will create the largest ever field experiment on the role of forests in regulating the quality and quantity of water flow in the Panama Canal, the most important watershed for world commerce.

“The dangers of unstable climatic conditions are in the news like never before. HSBC Malta believes that the issue of climate change is one that should also concern our own country, Malta. For this reason, HSBC is also taking initiatives that generate awareness about climate change and instill a sense of common responsibility,” said HSBC Malta CEO, Shaun Wallis. “One recent example is the screening of the environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which I would highly recommend people to see,” he added.