Overview Carbon Water Waste Ecosystems Appendix 58 Our approach The context Overview Nature, and the benefits that it provides, are the Our progress to date foundation of our society, cultures, and the global -87% economy. We depend on well-functioning ecosystems for clean air, water, food, medicine, energy, and building Wetlands that purify materials. But these very ecosystems are threatened or and store water already in decline. When a species dies off, the and provide habitats for implications for the ecosystem can be catastrophic. thousands of species One critical barrier to protecting our ecosystems is our have been reduced by current understanding of them. We know more about 87 percent relative to the rate of decline than we know about the species, pre-industrial levels. biodiversity, and ecosystems that are vital to our health and prosperity. Simply understanding where the world’s forests, fields, and waterways are remains a daunting Ecosystems are threatened or in decline. task of environmental accounting. There is very little scientific data on what species call those ecosystems home and why they thrive or decline. Scientists around the world are making tremendous We will aggregate environmental progress collecting this data and answering key 700 Protect questions. However, when the work is done, it frequently Grew the AI for Earth community to Established partnerships with The data from around the world takes too long—the assessments that do this work are over 700 AI for Earth grantees in more Nature Conservancy and the National and put it to work through data, thousands of pages, cite tens of thousands of scientific than 100 countries around the world, Fish and Wildlife Foundation to fulfill AI, and technology with the sources, and take years to publish. Assessing the planet’s including 17 strategic partnerships with our commitment to protect more land health must become a more sustained, efficient, and key platforms using the Azure cloud than we use by 2025. Planetary Computer. integrated practice that allows us to understand exactly to provide conservation and what is happening over time. sustainability services. Fortunately, there is massive potential for technology to revolutionize our environmental assessment practices, so Supported passage of the Great they can be conducted faster and cheaper, and—for the American Outdoors Act, which first time—be able to operate at a truly global scale. Microsoft directly advocated for Find out 10PB throughout the legislative process. more here On-boarded 10 petabytes of environmental and Earth observation data to Azure that is now freely available for use by the conservation community.