The Global Carbon Atlas is a platform to explore and visualize the most up-to-date data on carbon fluxes resulting from human activities and natural processes. Users can explore and download global and country level CO₂ emissions from human activity and look at the latest global updates that affect carbon emissions such as the Global Greenhouse Gas Budgets and the River Loop of the Global Carbon Cycle. Another unique resource part of the website tells the story of human Carbon production.
Resource Creator(s)
Global Carbon Atlas is an online platform for exploring, visualizing, and interpreting regional and global carbon data relating to human activities and natural processes. The graphs and data are made available with the expectation that wide dissemination will improve decision-making to deal with human-induced climate change. The Global Carbon Atlas is a community effort under the banner of the Global Carbon Project based on contributions from many research institutes and individual scientists around the world, who make observations, models and analysis available (Source).
Sustainable World Collaborative’s Analysis
We analyzed each resource in our database based on the Ways of Thinking from the Sustainability Education Framework for Teachers. We select only high-rated resources to include in the database. Below are our ratings and notes for this resource.
Systems Thinking
The Global Carbon Atlas takes users on a journey through the history of the relationship between carbon emissions and the development of societies and their possible futures. The organization has a strong focus on outreach, using data from many reputable research organizations around the world, and evaluating cause and effect relationships between human systems creating Carbon and the environment. The resource encourages users to look at many connected systems that affect the production of human made carbon in the past, present, and future.
Strategic Thinking
The Global Carbon Atlas was initially launched in 2013 but is continually updated with new research reports, keeping it contemporary and relevant. The resource delves into the root causes of human made carbon and how these have shifted over time. It supports the organizations goal of informing people about the carbon that is created from both human made and natural processes and how these processes affect one another to either create a more or less sustainable future.
Values Thinking
The resource explicitly states who the creators are and their values however, alternative perspectives or storylines that challenge certain stereotypes are not available through the resource. Additionally, stolen land is not notated on the provided maps. Traditional narratives are not specifically challenges and counternarratives are not highlighted. The resources main focus is purely to present data.
Futures Thinking
The Global Carbon Atlas is part of a short and long term plan that is focused on imagining a more sustainable future. Most data is organized in past, present, and future so users can see how the data shifts over time. The resource adds new research as it is published. The organization is largely focused on educational outreach for sustainability awareness.