Eye on Earth (Day 3 – Afternoon) Remote sensing, conservation monitoring and closing remarks
Taner Kodanaz (digitalglobe) technology that looking out to the sky now allow us to look at the Earth from 400 miles. Digital Global started 14 years with high-resolution satellite imagery – with billions of users a day that rely on online map. In natural disasters, they provide information that helped responding to it. Some examples of accelerating efforts include forest fire, intentional fires – in Global Forest Watch, Digital Globe data is used to monitor fire and deforestation and address it. The work WRI led Indonesia to deal with forest fire. Also showing the Missing Maps and respond to Kathmandu earthquake and other cases.
Anil Kumar (Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi) Abu Dhabi have done conservation effort for a long time. They have special interesting Houbara, Falcons, Scimitar Horn Oryx and several other species. Abu Dhabi was doing wildlife tracking 20 years ago, use satellite tracking to give insights into migratory routes and stopovers to reach agreement about avoiding their hunting during migration, and they’ve done different patterns of use. They also done Habitat mapping using satellite information with field verification checking that the classification works. Local ability to create classification of different habitats made it possible to share it, digitally and on paper. Allow protecting areas, follow national and international obligations, improve governance and even for emergency response and accurate blue carbon information. They also map local forestation. They have an environmental portal and share the information.
Lian Pin Koh (Conservation Drones) the idea to have be able to monitor nests of Orang-utan which are difficult to monitor from the ground. Because commercial drones are expensive, he was involved in creating a DIY drone in 2012, based on toy plane and programme the route, with simple camera. This enable them to create attention from conservation groups and community scientists. Conservation Drones started as a project and done many places. They have manage to use it for a wide range of projects and shared their experience. The drone is cheap – $700 and allow repeat monitoring, and also identifying illegal logging. Reaching 1-2 cm resolution. Also used in disaster relief in a case of flood from a busted dam that happened during forest monitoring. Attitude to ConservationDrones.org changed rapidly, from ridicule to excitement, and now they are involved in exploring mapping how to quantify biomas – fuel load and control burns. The issues about drones is to create actionable information.
Justin Saunders (eMapsite) – Malawi experience an incredible rainfall, with 200,000 displaced. Rapid response don’t happen until it reach the news – but it didn’t received much attention. They received radar imagery. They used the UN Charter to gain access to the radar imagery that helped to respond to the places that were flooded. They could see the inundation, and also use a flood model to see how realistic was it. Climate change exceeded all the assumptions – including one in 500 years. In Malawi, there isn’t information about the building and community assets. They have worked with OpenStreetMap, carrying out community mapping following the practices of Open Cities and this allow the support of many relief organisations – supporting. Also used the Masdap.mw system that is the Malawi Spatial Data Portal (based on open source) and that allow sharing information. Only one platform help to ensure sharing. Use crowdsourcing before, during and after the event – they are aware that with climate change it will exceed historical records. Use of open source software encourage people to train, and improved the flood modelling. Institutions take new technology, data and methodology rapidly – especially when it was free and not require investment. Visualisation helped action.
Steven Ramage (What3Words) – there are 135 countries that don’t have addressing information, and the Universal Postal Union, this is very valuable. There are four billion people without location reference. Allow creating a digital location reference in 3 words in places that are informal and don’t have addressing system. There are 860,000 people in informal settlements – how do we communicate the location. Instead of lat/long but when you need to communicate between people, creating 3 words key to the place. The system is small – 10MB and can work without connectivity, and there is research that demonstrate that words are easier to remember then numbers. Long words are to less populated area and there is new dictionary for each language, enabling to integrate into indigenous languages. Started to be used by esri, nestoria, UN, Safe Software, Mapillary, GoCarShare. Used in the Nepal earthquake, in delivery of medicine in informal settlement, UNOCHA suggest using what3words.
The final set of talks was titled Feet in the field chaired by Stuart Parerson (Conservation Leadership Programme) exploring volunteering programmes. He noted that the questions for the session were: How do we build capacity to collect primary data? How do we make people future conservation leaders? How do we communicate with policy makers? The Feet in the Field is aimed to support future conservation leaders. They have 6 key stages process of identifying and promoting young leaders. There i a need of investment and attention to maintain diversity.
David Kuria (KENVO) Kijabe Environment volunteers – explore conservation and livelihood – founded in 1994 in Kikuyu Escarpment Forest. They do education but also community empowerment. They observed forest degradation – illegal logging, over grazing and also breakdown of social systems. Knowledge and skills that gained locally and through NGOs, and then use that to mobilise the community, lobbying, but also patrolling and monitoring. They have done different studies – poaching, bird surveys, forest monitoring, as well as climate change and carbon trading. The data is used to action – e.g. encouraging ecotourism, or capacity building of many farmers. Data is important for decision makers and a strong tool for conservation awareness – and fosters support. But more important is the human side – good leadership, motivation and engagement, respecting existing systems, owned by stakeholders, working with marginalised groups. Many challenges: technical capacity, resources, high turn over of government staff, limited ability in volunteering, vast area and more.
Alberto Campos (Aquasis in Brazil) – 21 years preventing extinction in Brazil – based in Fortaleza, and they look after highly endangered marine mammals and birds. The have emergency plan and action plan – to do that they need long term plan. The problem is that they need long team funding, conservation & fieldwork training – and they been receiving support from the CLP). Systems that they developed been adopted by the government. Communicating these results is shifting focus for conservation of species to the resources they help to conserve. Biodiversity conservation is opening other resource – Manakin is becoming indicator to clean and accessible water – and that help to recognise them
Ayesha Yousef Al Blooshi (Marine Biodiversity at EAAD) – primary producers of environmental data, EAD produce data, then pass it to environmental management sector, that is use by government and then share it with the world. They been monitoring corals undersea and take photo transects that are analysed – it’s a very manual process that take a lot of time. They think about using CoralNet that use machine learning to recognised species. The sea grass is supporting the population of Dugongs, and monitor them from the air. They also track them and use drone technology to monitor dolphins. They have a collector app that allow them to record different sightings which speed up and simplify data collection. They also gather traditional knowledge from fishermen – also looking at the past and capture wealth of data.
Nicolas Heard – funds from the Mohamed bin Zayed conservation fund. They like people who are passionate about species. They can show how the small grant can be used to further the cause of their species. The passion need to be matched with science – also important to pass on enthusiasm to local communities, but that is not enough. Need data, information, knowledge, skills and collaboration. They provide small grants for survey and monitoring and encourage contribution of data to other purposes. Help support outreach, prioritising conservation action, help in efficiency
Jacky Judas (Wadi Wuraya National Park) in the eastern coast of the UAE. The park was created in 2009 and made into RAMSAR site in 2010, aiming to develop management plan. The water research programme are education, awareness and scientific data. The participants learn about fresh water ecosystems and the challenges, and also learn how to monitor the ecosystem. 10-15 volunteers through EarthWatch, research activities include Toad monitoring – field data collection, lab experiment, data input. Also monitoring dragonflies (hot spot for them in the area) and discovered a species that was never spotted in the UAE. Working with volunteers allow monitoring over the season, the use iNaturalist and help to GBIF
Jean-Christophe Vié (IUCN) have tradition of looking at primary data collection. Behind each assessment in the 70,000 species in the Red List, there is at least on person working on the ground. The created the habitat conservation programme allow them to support primary data collection. Species are good way to tell stories. Projects such as Save our Species help in understanding distribution of species and then identify key areas to provide support for conservation. They ask to have some monitoring information to understand what is the impact of investment.
Summary of the session: We need capacity of research; data must lead to action; show how species help to protect other resources; combine traditional and scientific knowledge; and realise that small funding can go long way with volunteers.
Once that part was completed, we moved to the summary of the summit.
H.E. Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Jacqueline McGlade, Barbara Ryan, Janet Ranganathan and Thomas Brooks .
Q: How do you all fit together? Razan: we find ways to fit together – regions are represented, there are many positive things happen in the Arab region and share them. Barbara: no one organisation can deal with environmental problem alone, the power is coming together from public, private and civil society – all need to work together, and there are challenges of changing our internal systems, bridge the transition from data to wisdom, we need to do that. Thomas: IUCN fit in to EoE through the power of the network of public bodies, 1000 civil society members, and more than 10000 experts, Janet: WRI – trying to scale things through counting and present it in an engaging way. Jacquie – what is important is to representing the UN family making poor and vulnerable heard. To address environmental problems, we need the Eye on Earth alliance, this is the way to reach out across the world. What are the tools and mechanisms that people need – how ‘how am I going to do it?’ is going to happen. Jacquie: provides a web intelligence information from UNEP Live, we can see how clusters of knowledge are being built up. Things are linked to other places across the world and letting citizens influence the agenda. Razan: need to synchronise elevator – one with policy makers that need the data and another one with scientists who are producing the data. We need to synchronicity that change in each region according to need.
People can completely bypass the system in many ways, but what happen if policy makers take too much time, and the needs are urgent – what will happen after the event? Jacquie: we are suggested activities that are dealing with foundational – global network or networks, environmental education, access for all and then link to thematic areas – biodiversity, disaster management, community sustainability and resilience, oceans and blue carbon, and water security. Barbara: the organisations that we are involved in – we need to think how our activities that already exist with identifying the themes. Thomas: IUCN can contribute the knowledge products to the range of Eye on Earth products, and advocate for mechanisms to develop capacity to generate data. Janet: contributing data platforms – resource watch, forest watch and on access for all. the Environment Democracy Index came out of EoE.
How do we do things better? there is much ground to cover and stimulating change. Barbara: for partnerships to work, it got to align with our own vision. The partnership let us do that. Advocacy for broad open data policies – we need to get on with it. Jacquie: we need to bring Principle 10 to the UN. We need to open up governmental debate, we grab participation by the neck and make it central to what we do. We have big environmental assembly. We need data that inform. Barbara: the capabilities of citizen science and citizen sensing was front and centre and that is central.
We need to talk with the media and behaviour change, broadening our horizons.
Razan – we converge and collaborate. We came from all regions of the world and walks of life. Some are affiliated with government, research, start up, companies, ecologists and environmentalists. Many here were here in 2011. Thanking for signaling the value in the eye on earth network. Developing a strong sense of community, aiming to solve major problems of the planet. We see sense of purpose in assisting the monitoring and progress towards the SDGs. We have 5 organisations that commit to be founding members of the organisations: AGEDI, IUCN, WRI, UNEP and GEO. They commit to develop assist and guide global community to achieve the SDGs. Eye on Earth can provide collective voice – it is informal alliance, and agreeing to convene Eye on Earth again.
