A healthy society requires a healthy planet by Microsoft services

In January we launched Microsoft Support Phone Number Microsoft’s carbon initiative, setting new goals for our company to become carbon negative by the end of this decade. While COVID-19 has upended daily life for almost all Microsoft Phone Number of us since then, Microsoft Phone Number sustainability  issues Support.Microsoft.Com/Help have become no less Http //Support.Microsoft.Com/Help urgent or important. That’s why today we’re announcing the second step in our sustainability efforts for 2020, focusing on preserving and protecting the biodiversity and health of the world’s ecosystems Microsoft Customer Service.

Nature and the benefits that it provides to people are the foundation of our global economy, our culture, and the overall human Microsoft Phone Number experience. Support.Microsoft.Com/Help We depend on clean air, water, food, medicine, energy, and building materials that nature provides, but these very Http //Support.Microsoft.Com/Help ecosystems Microsoft Support Phone Number are threatened or already in decline. Microsoft Customer Service Maintaining nature for the benefit of current and future generations is one of humanity’s Microsoft Customer Service.

 greatest challenges. Deploying technology to support this global effort is one of ours.

Microsoft’s new biodiversity initiative is multi-faceted. Perhaps most importantly, it aims to put data and digital technology to work, including through an ambitious program to aggregate Http //Support.Microsoft.Com/Help environmental data from Support.Microsoft.Com/Help around the world and put it to work in a new “Planetary Computer.” We will combine this with new work to enable partners and customers to use the Microsoft Phone Number resulting output to Microsoft Support Phone Number enhance Microsoft Customer Service environmental decision-making in their organizational activities. We’ll also use it to speak out on ecosystem-related public policy issues and take responsibility for Microsoft’s own land footprint.

Biodiversity and ecosystems in decline

As with the carbon issues we addressed in January, we believe that our work on biodiversity should be science-led and data-driven. One of the most important steps in this field has  Microsoft Phone Number Support.Microsoft.Com/Help come from the United Nations Microsoft Customer Service Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which is responsible for monitoring the health of the planet, and which last year issued its first Microsoft Support Phone Number.

Http //Support.Microsoft.Com/Help. The news was grim. A quarter of the planet’s species are threatened with extinction. Wetlands that purify and store water and provide habitats for thousands of species have been reduced by 87 percent. Microsoft Phone Number Coral reefs that provide aquatic habitats, food, natural flood barriers, medicine and millions of tourism jobs have declined Support.Microsoft.Com/Help by 50 percent in the modern era.  Microsoft Support Phone Number Mammals, birds, and other wildlife populations are down almost 60 percent in the last 40 years, and the number of species threatened with extinction continues to rise rapidly. When an animal dies off, the ecosystem it called home begins to unravel and the implications can be catastrophic.

Take one example, the impact of insects on our health and economic prosperity. Insects are a group whose diversity and abundance has fallen Microsoft Phone Number dramatically over the past few decades. Insects are the Http //Support.Microsoft.Com/Help base of the Microsoft Customer Service food Support.Microsoft.Com/Help chain, consumed by birds, fish, and small animals. Insect pollinators, including bees, are essential to the production of more than  of the world’s food crops.  Microsoft Support Phone Number Without insects there is no food and without food, people can’t survive.

A principled approach to guide our work

Whenever we take on a new and complex societal issue, we strive first Microsoft Customer Service to learn and then to define a principled approach to guide our efforts. Support.Microsoft.Com/Help This has been fundamental to our work around the Http //Support.Microsoft.Com/Help protection of privacy, the ethical Microsoft Support Phone Number development of artificial intelligence, our aggressive carbon goals, and our approach to biodiversity and ecosystems as well. Today we’re adopting Microsoft Customer Service four principles to guide our work in helping achieve global biodiversity goals Microsoft Phone Number.