In Brazil, Tech Is A New Frontier In Battles Over Indigenous Lands
July 25th, 2024
Via Dialogue Earth, a look at how – as illegal miners seek to profit from the Amazon, and NGOs to protect it – high-speed internet, AI and even Flight Simulator are emerging as tools for good and bad: A dirt runway near an illegal mining site in the Yanomami Indigenous territory, Roraima state, Brazil. In […]
Read More »AI, Data Analytics Help Create ‘Smart Rainforest’ in Australia
February 15th, 2024
Via Environment & Energy Leader, an article on the world’s first “smart rainforest,” where artificial intelligence and data is used to advance sustainable and cost-effective environmental restoration models across the globe:
In an era where technological innovation meets environmental stewardship, NTT Group has joined forces with ClimateForce, embarking on an ambitious journey to breathe new life into the Daintree Rainforest.
This partnership is set to unveil what it calls the world’s first “smart rainforest,” using artificial intelligence and data to advance sustainable and cost-effective environmental restoration models across the globe.
Advancing Forest Restoration with Technology
At the heart of this initiative lies the Smart Management Platform (SMP) technology, developed by NTT. This innovative platform is designed to rejuvenate a section of Australia’s Daintree Rainforest, previously compromised by agricultural activities and invasive plant species. The technology’s integration promises not only to regenerate the land but also to safeguard it against future ecological threats.ClimateForce, a point of light in environmental regeneration, has taken up the mantle to restore this section of the rainforest, located adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef. With NTT’s support, the project will utilize advanced AI, data analytics, and predictive analytics to evaluate and implement organic reforestation techniques.
This strategic approach aims to protect biodiversity, mitigate climate change effects, and bolster resilient local economies.
A Shared Vision for a Sustainable Future
The collaboration between NTT is a shared vision for sustainable advances and improving biodiversity.
Barney Swan, the CEO and co-founder of ClimateForce, expressed gratitude for the support from NTT and NTT DATA, emphasizing the project’s potential to accelerate their goals and develop replicable models for ecosystem regeneration worldwide.
NTT DATA’s involvement extends beyond technological support, contributing to operational and fundraising efforts. This collaboration was sparked by a previous sponsorship of an expedition advocating for sustainable practices in Antarctica, highlighting the long-standing commitment of both organizations to environmental sustainability.
By using advanced technology and fostering international cooperation with the creation of the smart rainforest in the Daintree, NTT and ClimateForce said they hope to set a precedent for global environmental restoration efforts. This project not only aims to restore an important ecosystem but also to inspire similar initiatives in other areas across the world, according to the organizers.
“NTT DATA met Barney through our sponsorship of his father’s Undaunted: South Pole 2023 expedition, which advocated for sustainable practices and long-term protections for Antarctica,” said Bob Pryor, CEO, NTT DATA Services. “We’re excited to extend this relationship and help ClimateForce with its mission in the tropics, which perfectly aligns with our own vision for realizing a sustainable future.”
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Read More »Addressing Deforestation via Remote Sensing Technology
August 18th, 2021
Via Africa News, a look at how deforestation can be mitigated using remote sensing technology:
Israeli-based Albo Climate and Mauritius-based Tembo Power are partnering on a mutually exclusive basis to produce a high-resolution carbon monitoring model of vulnerable tropical forests. The maps will help to evaluate ecosystem health carefully. Furthermore, they will monitor the areas for deforestation and generate verified high-quality carbon offsets.
The collaboration will begin by developing carbon credits from two national parks in Cameroon. Both parks are home to a diverse range of unique plants and endangered animals. This includes pangolins, hippos, leopards, black colobus, mandrills, lowland gorillas and chimpanzees. It also has numerous birds, reptiles and fish species. However, the parks face increasing threats due to logging, poaching, mining, agricultural activities and coastal infrastructure development. Thus, given current deforestation rates, the two forests may lose 6,000 hectares per year.
Jacques Amselem, CEO of Albo Climate, commented: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Tembo, a key leader in developing clean energy and conservation projects across sub-Saharan Africa. Combined with our unique deep-learning, satellite-based approach to carbon credit quantification and verification, we see the potential for true impact at scale across the continent.”
The expected income from the carbon offset projects will involve maintaining the park’s boundaries. It will also include expanded support of ranger services and surveillance systems by the forest management of Cameroon. In addition, the generated income will go to supporting local communities.
Furthermore, Albo Climate and Tembo will further collaborate on additional conservation projects across East and Southern Africa. This strategic partnership will foster a robust and widely applicable remote-sensing carbon model usable in Africa’s array of tropical forests. Tembo Power’s founder, Raphael Khalifa, explained: “Tembo’s goal is to position our subsidiary Tembo Climate in full compliance with the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets led by Mark Carney and Bill Winters, advocating for the extensive use of technology to address global warming”. He added that they were glad to bring Albo’s cutting edge approach to the African continent.
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Read More »Armed with Data and Smartphones, Amazon Communities Fight Deforestation
August 8th, 2021
Via Mongabay, an article on how – armed with data and smartphones – Amazon communities are fighting deforestation:
>Equipping Indigenous communities in the Amazon with remote-monitoring technology can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.
> Between 2018 and 2019, researchers implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities within the Peruvian Amazon.
Compared with other communities where the program wasn’t implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively.> The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like logging and illegal mining.
Teaching Indigenous communities in the Amazon to tap on remote-monitoring technologies during forest patrols can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.
Researchers, whose work was published July 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities in Loreto, the northernmost department of Peru, between 2018 and 2019. They trained and paid three representatives from each community to patrol their forests monthly and verify reports of suspected deforestation using a smartphone application and satellite data.
Compared with 37 other communities in Loreto where the program wasn’t implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like illegal mining, logging, and the planting of illicit crops such as coca to manufacture cocaine, the researchers found.
The collaboration between Rainforest Foundation US (RFUS), the World Resources Institute (WRI), Indigenous leaders and independent researchers is the latest in a growing body of research that says recognizing and protecting Indigenous rights is the most effective way to preserve natural rainforests. In Latin America, studies have shown Indigenous people to be by far the best guardians of forests in the region, with deforestation rates up to 50% lower in their territories than elsewhere.
One-third of the Amazon Rainforest falls within formally acknowledged Indigenous peoples’ territories. Community-based forest monitoring programs coupled with enforcement support from local officials could save one-fifth of the 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) of rainforest in Brazilian and Peruvian Indigenous territories likely to be lost over the next decade, RFUS estimated.
Deforestation alerts from satellite data have long been publicly available. WRI’s Global Forest Watch (GFW) tool relies on an algorithm developed by university researchers to detect changes in forest cover through satellite imagery. In Peru, the national Geobosques platform uses GFW data to issue early alerts of suspected deforestation.
However, these alerts rarely filter down to remote rainforest groups lacking reliable internet access, resulting in communities often detecting illegal deforestation activities only when they are well underway and difficult to halt.
“The whole point is to put the deforestation information into the hands of those most affected by its consequences and who can take action to stop it,” Tom Bewick, who is the Peru country director for RFUS and who was involved in the study, said in a statement.
During the two-year study, researchers hired couriers to traverse the Amazon River and its tributaries every month to deliver USB drives containing Geobosques reports of suspected deforestation to remote communities.
Trained representatives, or monitors, would then upload this information into a specialized smartphone application, which they used to navigate to the locations of forest disturbances during their monthly patrols. Where they identified cases of unauthorized deforestation, monitors would take photos as evidence and flag them to the community, which could then decide to report it to local authorities.
Monitors use the smartphone app Locus Map to identify GPS coordinates of deforestation for their regular patrols. Photo credit: Cameron Ellis
“We are helping them set up this system by which they can collect the evidence but our hope is that then we walk away,” Suzanne Pelletier, executive director of RFUS, said in a video. “They can then train others and be the model for thousands of other communities across the Amazon.”Over the two-year period, communities under the program saved 456 hectares (1,127 acres) of rainforest, preventing the release of more than 234,000 metric tons of carbon emissions at a cost of $5 a ton. This makes it slightly more expensive than the $4.30 a ton average price of nature-based, forest management carbon credits in 2019, according to data from Ecosystem Marketplace.
But while nature-based credits have traditionally been plagued by the problem of leakage — where ecosystem conservation projects, even if successful in one area, often shift deforestation to another location — the researchers observed no such displacement of deforestation for the communities in their study.
They theorized this could be due to the inaccessibility of the forests in Loreto. “In the region that we study, in the general absence of roads, most transportation occurs by boat. As a result, the areas most vulnerable to deforestation are located close to navigable rivers,” they wrote in their report. Since Indigenous communities in Loreto also tend to live along the river, community-based forest-monitoring programs increase the cost of resource extraction, they said.
A Kichwa monitor fills out a report confirming an occurrence of illegal deforestation after returning from a forest patrol. Photo credit: Melvin Shipa Sihuango
“The study provides evidence that supporting our communities with the latest technology and training can help reduce deforestation in our territories,” Jorge Perez Rubio, president of the Indigenous group Regional Organization of the People of the Eastern Amazon (ORPIO), said in a statement. ORPIO worked with RFUS and WRI to implement the forest-monitoring programs in the study.“Our network is ready to partner with Rainforest Foundation US to apply this technology-enabled model to our community forest protection initiatives basin-wide,” Gregorio Mirabal, general coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), said in a statement. COICA, which was not involved in the study, is an umbrella association for Indigenous organizations in the Amazon lowlands, of which ORPIO is a part.
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Read More »Satellite Alerts Help Fight Deforestation In Africa
January 5th, 2021
Via Thomson Reuters Foundation, an article on how satellite alerts are helping fight deforestation in Africa:
A system using satellite data to send free alerts when trees are destroyed has been linked to a significant drop in forest losses in Africa, researchers and academics said on Monday.
Deforestation dropped by an average of 18% across nine central African countries after the alerts were introduced, found a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“This is really a small revolution,” said study lead Fanny Moffette, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Now that we know subscribers of alerts can have an effect on deforestation, there’s potential ways in which our work can improve the training they receive and support their efforts,” she added in a statement.
Trees absorb about a third of greenhouse gas emissions produced worldwide, but tropical rainforests disappeared at a rate of one football pitch every six seconds in 2019, according to data published by Global Forest Watch.
The study looked at whether the alert system – launched by the Global Forest Watch monitoring project in 2016 – was affecting tree losses in 22 tropical countries in South America, Africa and Asia.
It draws on satellite images updated every eight days, and uses artificial intelligence to identify where trees are vanishing by comparing pictures. It then warns subscribers covering the area so they can investigate and take action.
Organisations signed up to the alerts include governments, wildlife officials and park authorities, as well as NGOs and local forest protectors.
They have used the data to stage extra patrols in areas shown as losing trees and to catch illegal loggers in the act, said Katherine Shea at Global Forest Watch.
Overall the risk of deforestation was 18% lower in 2016-2018 than in earlier years in the nine African countries, which included Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
However, deforestation did not decrease overall in South American or Asian countries covered by the alerts.
The authors said similar technology already available in those areas may have lessened the impact.
They estimated the alert system is likely to have stopped between $149 million and $696 million worth of damage and economic consequences from climate change.
“These new systems are making it really easy for people to have a look and see what is going on – and then take action,” said Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at University College London, who was not involved in the study.
“Having a free alert system to give people near real-time information is incredibly helpful.”
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Read More »Five Technologies That Help Thwart Illegal Logging
June 1st, 2016
Via the World Resources Institute, a report on new technology that can be used to help preserve forests:
The illegal timber trade creates problems for everyone. Governments lose valuable revenue and natural resources. Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission reportedthat the country lost $9 billion in revenue to the illegal timber trade between 2003 and 2014. Meanwhile, businesses sourcing legal timber lose profits and competitiveness to illegal timber supplies sold at lower prices.
So governments and businesses are starting to do more to improve timber traceability, including adopting new and existing technologies that can help track timber, manage information, and eventually, help combat illegal logging.
WRI, Instituto Nacional de Bosques (INAB) of Guatemala and IUCN Mesoamerica, with support from USAID, the European Commission, and FAO recently hosted aworkshop in Antigua, Guatemala to explore technological applications for improving forest information management and traceability in timber supply chains. Participants discussed some of the most cutting-edge technologies available today or on the horizon.
Technologies that Track Wood’s Roots
Some technologies target the tracking of timber as it moves through the supply chain to guarantee authenticity of the timber’s origin, including:
- Stardust is a dust-like material that can be sprayed onto wood and detected only with a hand-held device. Stardust has the potential to be applied to timber and pulp and paper products as a cheaper alternative to barcodes, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and other tracking technologies.Greenwood, an organization that connects buyers with producers of high-quality wood products from sustainably harvested trees, is now pilot testing Stardust’s application to some of their wood supplies.
- TreeTAG is an emerging smartphone-based supply chain traceability system developed by Earth Observation Systems that tracks the location of logs transported from the forest to the mill. It requires all authorized personnel—from those cutting trees to those processing logs—to report activities and volumes, raising alerts when there is suspicious activity. Only trees previously authorized for logging can enter the system. Earth Observation Systems is currently working with Sociedad Civil Custodios de la Selva (CUSTOSEL), a sustainable mahogany producer, to pilot test the system on wood used by Bedell Guitars.
- Several government agencies are also developing systems for supply chain traceability. The Forestry Commission of Ghana is piloting Ghana Wood Tracking System (GWTS), developed by Ata Marie, a data platform that centralizes all formerly paper-based documentation, and allows users like auditors to upload information from their phones and computers. The Guatemalan Forest Service is developing SEINEF (Sistema Electrónico de Información de Empresas Forestales – Forest Enterprises Electronic Information System), a web platform that requires actors along the supply chain to enter volume and authorization information. The system allows government officials and law enforcement officers to follow the flow of timber products from the forest to buyers, and identify discrepancies in volumes, species and products reported. The Brazilian Forest Service also uses a traceability and information management system that not only tracks trees as they are logged and sawn into timber, but also uses remote sensing data to monitor forest management
Other technologies focus on aggregating, analyzing, visualizing and verifying supply chain information:
- Global Traceability Systems’ Radix Tree is a platform that enables buyers to collect information from suppliers to establish a chain-of-custody. Radix Tree also performs legality risk assessments based on information provided, a required step for compliance with the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR). Furthermore, it also helps users manage their inventory of products and shipments, provide secure encryption and private data storage and import data from multiple formats. Some of its users include Unilever and Bureau Veritas, a leading global certification body.
- BVRio’s Responsible Timber Exchange uses big data to assess whether potential sellers are complying with U.S. and European legal wood requirements. The database not only draws information from official documentation, such as logging permits and sawmill operating licenses, but also legal records of forest owners, loggers and even forest engineers involved in a shipment to assess the risk of illegality. With this information, the exchange allows buyers to evaluate sellers based on the traceability of their timber and compliance with specific legal, environmental, social and labor criteria. A similar system is under development in Brazil, led by the nonprofit Imaflora.
These technologies and systems can significantly bolster the efforts of governments and businesses to better track timber supplies and prevent illegally sourced timber from entering supply chains.
However, while timber traceability technologies and platforms can provide much needed information, it’s only worthwhile if governments and businesses translate this data into action. For governments, that means eradicating corruption, implementing systems that work for all stakeholders, and allocating more funding and resources to enforcement. For businesses, it means working with suppliers to gather information and communicate legal sourcing policies, as well as cutting ties with bad actors.
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