Change of climate

"Emphatically no," said Zoe Gamble of Earthwatch Institute (Europe), the ever-expanding charity which now employs 62 people at its Oxford headquarters, up from 15 in 1998.

She added: "We will do business with anyone, including tobacco companies, mining corporations and banking groups, but they must sign up and tick the right boxes for our corporate environmental responsibility group first.

"We want to embed climate change thinking into the heart of business."

The charity, based at Prama House, South Parade, is soon moving to larger premises at Mayfield House in Banbury Road. It has teamed up with WWF, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Climate Group on a five-year £50m Climate Partnership funded by HSBC with the aim of tackling the impacts of climate change for people, forests and freshwater worldwide.

An early indication of how some of the £17.5m allocated to the Oxford charity under the scheme is being spent will this year manifest itself in Wytham Woods.

Here Earthwatch is constructing a purpose-built residential climate centre, working with Oxford University's Conservation Research Unit, which from this summer will be staffed by three employees plus volunteers and scientists undertaking projects backed by the charity. It received planning permission for the new centre last month, though figures for the total cost are still not available.

The charity was founded in 1971 in Boston, USA, and in Oxford 16 years ago, with the twin purpose of producing funds for scientific research, and manpower to carry out that research, while at the same time raising awareness among the public at large of climate change issues. It has so far fielded more than 85,000 volunteers to more than 120 scientific projects, ranging from a pilot scheme last year in Wytham, measuring the impact of climate change there, to protecting the eggs of the endangered leatherback turtles of St Croix in the US Virgin Islands.

The new five-year programme involving HSBC worldwide has grown out of a similar partnership with the bank, which came to an end last year, called Investing in Nature. During that programme, about 2,000 HSBC employees embarked on courses with Earthwatch, many returning to spread expertise and awareness of conservation issues among colleagues and neighbours.

Ms Gamble said that the fundamental princpal of the organisation was to work with industry, even organisations that some other environmental organisations "would not touch".

The leatherback turtle project is a case in point. The population of such sea turtles has been brought in many places to the brink of extinction, largely through beach developments. But on St Croix, at the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, nesting leatherbacks are staging a dramatic recovery, with numbers in the past few years doubling or tripling those of the early 1980s. The charity's 2008 Expedition Guide describes how volunteers help turtles: "Each night, you and your teamates will walk the sand beaches, patrolling for the most massive reptiles on Earth. When a female hauls its cumbersome shell up the beach to nest, you will record the nest location, turtle size, and number of eggs laid."

It adds: "Later teams will also help hatchlings reach the sea safely and dig up hatched nests to track hatching success and save any stragglers. Your efforts will become an important part of one of the longest-running sea turtle research and conservation projects of its kind in the world.

And the cost for taking a uesful holiday in the Caribbean? £1,195 for 11 days, or £1,495 for teenagers.

In 2006, Earthwatch (Europe) spent 94 per cent of its £4.8m income (up from £4.2m in 2005) on its core activities of education and engagement. This year, the charity expects turnover to hit £7m, up from £2m ten years ago.

Oxford has a proud history of starting innovative charities (Oxfam springs to mind) and Jo-Anne Croft, announcing that building work is getting under way at Wytham Woods, said that Earthwatch was now keen to establish ever-closer links with Oxfordshire people, who, of course, would be welcome to carry out volunteer work here and abroad.

HSBC Group Chairman Stephen Green said: "The HSBC Climate Partnership will achieve something profoundly important. By working with four of the world's most respected environmental organisations and creating a green taskforce' of thousands of HSBC employees worldwide, we believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change. Over the next five years, HSBC will make responding to climate change central to our business operations and at the heart of the way we work with our clients across the world."

So, in the end, does working with industry, rather than campaigning against some of its activities pay off?

One example of its collaborative approach was its success in moving shipping lanes in the Mediterranean to avoid bottlenose dolphin feeding grounds, after four years negotiating with boat operators, fishermen and the Spanish Navy.

Ms Croft said: "We have never had to stop working with a corporate partner on the grounds that they are not meeting the targets that we set with them. This is, we feel, testament to the success of our corporate engagement programme.

"Earthwatch does not endorse the activities of any company that we work with, but rather sets out to inform and influence them in order that they improve their environmental performance."

She added: "We consider it important to work with companies that have a significant environmental impact, such as the oil and gas industry, to maximize the impact of our work where it is most needed."

She added: "As our knowledge of climate change grows, we are forced to recognise that time is not on our side.

"We know that businesses have the potential to play a leading role in mitigating and managing the impact of climate change. We also know that business of all kinds will be impacted by climate change. We therefore feel that it is more important now, than ever before, to form cross-sector partnerships to find win-win solutions. "