This year’s Earth Day theme, Invest in Our Planet, resonates with me and so many around the world. Now more than ever, as the impact of climate change becomes abundantly clear, everyone’s focus and effort to protect and repair our environment is crucial.

At Oracle, we’re committed to being at the forefront of environmental and social impact to serve a transforming world. “Transforming” is an important word here. Environmental, economic and social pressures create wave after wave of change globally. Any successful endeavor to achieve positive change for the planet must be ready to adapt to meet evolving circumstances, needs, and challenges.

The question I often ask myself then is, how might we better serve a transforming world?

Doubling Down on Our Commitments

Setting ambitious sustainability goals and helping customers on their sustainability journeys are fundamental in our fight for a healthier planet.  By embedding sustainability within our operations, products, and employee culture, we can share the positive results and success stories from those actions to inspire others – and drive change.    

Oracle is focused on achieving net zero emissions by 2050. We have pledged that by 2025, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will be powered with 100% renewable energy. Already, energy use in Oracle’s Cloud Regions in Frankfurt, London, Newport, Wales, Zurich, Amsterdam, Marseille, Stockholm, Milan, La Courneuve, Paris and Madrid is 100% renewable.

Oracle’s impact, however, goes well beyond our own company’s goals. We know that serving a transforming world requires lengthening our reach. It means ensuring change-makers on-the-ground have the resources they need to act quickly and efficiently for enduring solutions.

Investing in Effective and Impactful Organizations

Beyond our own sustainability initiatives, we also invest in impactful environmental organizations that are protecting the natural world and wildlife. Take Pristine Seas as one example. Dr. Enric Sala of National Geographic Pristine Seas founded the project in 2008 to create marine reserves free of commercial fishing, and Oracle began supporting the project in 2009.

To date, Pristine Seas has helped create 26 marine reserves that cover more than 6.5 million square kilometers. Still, the science is clear that is more is needed: we need to protect 30% more of the world’s oceans by 2030 to prevent a massive extinction of species—and the resulting collapse of our life support system. Consider that our oceans serve as the main source of animal protein for more than a billion people and provide more than half of the world’s oxygen. 

Oracle has long supported many similarly effective organizations focused on restoring our ecosystems in various ways. One prime example is Save the Redwoods League, which helps restore ancient California redwood forests to stimulate the growth of young trees, enabling the forest to regain resilience against drought and fire, expand wildlife habitats and improve waterway health.

Another is The Nature Conservancy, whose mission is to conserve the lands and the waters on which all life depends.  Our grants support the restoration of Northern California’s kelp forest, a critical ocean habitat that supports almost a thousand marine species, as well as protection of the Barton Creek Habitat Preserve in Austin, Texas.  The 4,000-acre preserve protects habitat for several rare and endangered species and safeguards the quality of water in the Barton Creek watershed and the Edwards Aquifer, which is the main supplier of drinking water for two million Central Texans.

Protecting Endangered Species

Another example of a long-time Oracle grantee protecting wildlife and vital ecosystems is the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (Fossey Fund). Three decades ago, we teamed up with the Fossey Fund in a shared mission to protect endangered gorillas, and today, Oracle Cloud hosts one of the world’s largest, most comprehensive longitudinal collection of data on any wild gorilla population, for free. Also available free to researchers, students and citizen scientists everywhere is Animal Observer, an animal health and behavioral data collection app developed by the Fossey Fund with support from Oracle.

Why invest in gorilla conservation? Gorillas live in the second-largest tropical rainforest left on the planet, the Congo Basin. Rainforests are one of our best natural defenses against climate change. Often called the “lungs of the Earth,” they breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. Yet, an alarming 39 million acres of tropical rainforests were lost at the hands of human exploitation in 2017 alone.

Known as an “umbrella species,” gorillas play a critical role in protecting their forest habitat by dispersing seeds, maintaining healthy vegetation, and indirectly protecting many other species of plants, animals, and insects. Further, humans share 98% of their DNA with gorillas, and supporting a healthy forest ecosystem can help prevent disease spillover from animals to humans. By protecting gorillas—the “gardeners of the forest”—we are ultimately protecting the planet, and ourselves.

Volunteering for a Healthy Planet

Oracle Volunteers invest in our planet year-round by creating Oracle Volunteering projects in their communities to help protect the environment.

This year, Oracle Volunteers are rallying around a key initiative: Focus on Environment. Ocean Conservancy is Oracle Volunteering’s global partner in this initiative. Ocean Conservancy is on a mission to engage communities around the world in protecting the ocean from today’s greatest global challenges. Their work focuses on creating evidence-based solutions for a healthy ocean and the wildlife and communities that depend on it.

Oracle Volunteering has partnered with Ocean Conservancy to host local cleanups around the world since 2021, and thousands of people have participated. Oracle Volunteering has implemented more than 60 projects in collaboration with Ocean Conservancy, and this year, Oracle Volunteers have already signed up for 33 projects across more than a dozen countries.

Oracle Volunteers are also helping in other ways including planting trees, supporting wildlife conservation efforts through citizen science projects, assembling solar lamps, creating rainwater harvesting systems, and much more.

The Time to Invest in Our Planet Is Now

At Oracle, we have seen the widespread positive impact of our own investments toward a healthier world. But we know no one can create real change alone. This work would not be possible without our inspirational grantees and partners who are as committed as we are to repairing and protecting the natural world.

As conservationist Jane Goddall said, “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” This Earth Day, I hope we can each take a close look at the impact we have on the world around us. Whether that means volunteering for your favorite cause, exercising your purchasing power as a consumer, opening your wallets and giving to organizations doing excellent work, or the everyday choices you make about how you power your household, the food you eat, and the vehicle you drive. No action is too small and each of us can make an impact for the better.