Environment

The BNP Paribas Foundation has been supporting research on climate change since 2010 with a total budget of €12 million.. Altogether, 324 researchers, professors and engineers have received funding since the program’s creation, through lectures, exhibitions and other public events. Thanks to the work of the research teams, awareness on environmental issues has been raised among 340, 000 people.

Key figures

12M€

dedicated to environmental research on climate and biodiversity

340 000

people made aware of environmental issues

Climate & Biodiversity Initiative
Our program to support research

In 2016, the BNP Paribas Foundation’s scientific committee selected eight new research projects to be funded in the frame of Climate Initiative program. They were chosen after a call for projects dedicated to the scientific community.

Discover the projects

Our awareness-raising activities

The BNP Paribas Foundation takes its role raising awareness of climate change and biodiversity issues seriously. That is why we carry out various awareness-raising activities providing the scientific community and the general public with an opportunity to meet each other.

Discover our activities

Climate & Biodiversity Initiative

Today, climate change is becoming the main driver of biodiversity erosion. Protecting and preserving ecosystems are now a major concern worldwide. That is why the Foundation renamed its program “Climate & Biodiversity Initiative” end of 2018. In 2019, another call for projects will be launched to support scientific research on both climate and biodiversity.

Members of the scientific committee

Philippe Gillet: geophysicist, geologist and professor, Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne. Heads the scientific committee
Sonia Seneviratne: professor, Institute of Atmosphere and Climate Sciences, ETH Zurich
Philippe Cury: Director, Institute of Research for Development
Corinne Le Quéré: professor, East Anglia University (Climate Change Science and Policy), director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele: PhD in physics, climatologist, professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, where he co-directs the environmental management master’s program. Member of the Earth and Climate Research Centre.
Joanna Haigh: professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College in London, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Environment
Franck Courchamp: CNRS research director at the Systematic Ecology and Evolution Laboratory (ESE-CNRS/Université Paris-Sud), 2014 laureate of the “Climate Initiative” program
Thomas Stocker: professor of climate and environmental physics at Berne University, where he chairs the Climate and Environmental Physics Department

Raising awareness of environmental issues

Thanks to the research projects supported by the BNP Paribas Foundation, awareness-raising activities are implemented every year, familiarizing the general public, BNP Paribas employees and our partners with environmental issues.

For example, since 2015 the BNP Paribas Foundation has teamed up with Climate, 360 exhibition organized by the Cité des Sciences in partnership with the French Institute and UN Environment. So far, the show has toured in 15 countries where the Group is located.

The Foundation also supports the Global Youth Video Competition to encourage the youth taking part in activities to fight climate change. The annual awards ceremony takes place each year at the COP organized by UNFCCC. In 2018, 968 applications from 110 countries were submitted.

Moreover, marking the International Year of the Reef in 2018, the BNP Paribas Foundation funded the Reef Services project to better understand and predict the consequences of global warming on coral reefs and the services they provide. A web platform, Corals Matter, was created in collaboration with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) to provide the general public with the tools and information needed to protect marine biodiversity.

Tools