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 since 2010
340 000
people made aware of environmental issues since 2010
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 has been 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.
