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Hi John,
It’s our 20th Anniversary!
Today, we officially launch our Better Sharing fundraising campaign, inviting you to help us raise $25,000 in contributions by July 12th.
In the weeks leading up to our Better Sharing fundraiser on July 12th, we’ll highlight compelling stories and wins from our 4 key program areas: Open Climate, Open Journalism, Open Culture, and Open Education.
Let's kick things off with one of our newest programs: Open Climate.
Climate Change, and the resulting harm to our global biodiversity, is one of the world’s most pressing challenges. The complexity of the Climate Crisis requires collaborative global interventions that make use of multidisciplinary research.
Last year, Creative Commons launched a new partnership with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) to promote Open Access to research on climate science and biodiversity. This is a promising new campaign funded by the Open Society Foundations prompted by the urgent need for Open Access to research and data to address the Climate Crisis.
Organizations around the world have recognized the need to facilitate access to knowledge and data. For example, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) prioritizes providing open data. The INPE’s open web portal, TerraBrasilis, is CC licensed, and specifically designed to be user-friendly and interactive in order to provide open access to data on carbon emissions and deforestation.
Access to data is key to protecting Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest, one of the earth’s most important carbon reserves. Last year, Nature released a study with data indicating that the Amazon Rainforest now emits more carbon than it absorbs, a trend that has catastrophic implications for the whole planet.
Yet political figures like President Jair Bolsonaro have resisted the INPE’s efforts to provide open access to this data.
President Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked the INPE for producing deforestation and other scientific data. Fearing that the INPE’s research could undermine his administration’s efforts to dismantle environmental regulations in the Amazon in favor of profit-bearing industries, he strategically accused the INPE of intentionally producing “mauled” data.
While these attacks have cast doubt on the INPE’s work, their continued dedication to open data is essential to ongoing global efforts to address Climate Change.
CC has an important role to play in this work, providing the CC licenses and infrastructure necessary for opening up knowledge. Our Open Climate Campaign is a timely venture, and key to ensuring institutions like INPE can continue to openly share the data we need to address global crises like climate change.
Follow along with us next week, when we’ll look at how CC’s efforts to keep journalism open and accessible are essential to a healthy information ecosystem, and by extension, democracy.
In the meantime, here are some ways you can support our Better Sharing campaign:
 Donate
 Share
Thank You!
The CC Team 
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