5 essential tools for nature conservation we are still missing (Part 1/2)
Grégoire Dubois
Angry scientist. Managing the Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (KCBD) of the European Commission. Posts are my own views.
There is not a day passing without the announcement of new web based tools, dashboards or platforms launched in support to nature conservation. Maps and data sets have become very easy to access and share over the web and any junior programmer can today easily integrate these data in a nice looking interface. Looking behind the doors, one will find most of the time that the content presented is the same as anywhere else and that only the packaging has been changed, either to make it more attractive or simply to target different end-users. Clearly, this wealth of data and the technological advancements offer exciting new opportunities to develop tools for nature conservation but we are still getting distracted from developing a few essential tools that still need to be developed or struggle to move from prototypes to operational systems.
I have written down hereafter 5 proposals for tools which should, in my opinion, be developed in priority. I am already working on a few of these which would still fall in the category of prototypes and need to be scaled up more seriously.
1) A tool documenting "who is funding what and where for biodiversity conservation"
Billions of dollars are spent every year in support to nature conservation by very different organizations and institutions but we don't know much about where the money is going and the kind of activities it is supporting. Are we overfunding certain areas? Are we missing critical habitats? Are we not reinventing the wheel in certain countries?
Having a tool mapping past, ongoing and planned projects globally would be a game changer as it would help to
a) ensure a minimum of coordination between all national and international agencies, NGOs and charities, and even between funding programs within a single organization. How often have different donors funded similar activities, or worst... unaware... paid for the same services, equipment or infrastructures, in the same area?
b) identify gaps in conservation as there are so many places that have been abandoned;
c) identify local implementing agencies and local actors that are already active in the area of interest to benefit from their experience;
d) improve the lesson's learnt from older projects and our understanding of their impact.
One will easily find country statistics on the web documenting how much was paid and how much as was received, as these numbers are required by international conventions and statistics offices but we need to go beyond the simple reporting of these expenses to satisfy the (legitimate) curiosity of the tax payers. Some significant efforts have been made to generate some added value to data about development funding by a few initiatives such as AidData for example but there is no information on conservation efforts available at site level ( see https://www.aiddata.org/blog/biodiversity-conservation-aid-who-is-getting-how-much-and-why )
To answer the fundamental question of who is funding what and where for nature conservation I started a few years ago eConservation which is still in its infancy. Earlier versions were mapping too many projects from too many donors and it quickly appeared that the tool would not be sustainable. There were high risks of duplication of the collected data and it was impossible to know whether the datasets were complete. The current strategy is to focus on a very few donors, to geotag systematically all projects since the beginning of a program and flag projects with insufficient information to get later more details. This approach is very expensive as it requires enormous manual efforts (for each project received, read the abstract to assess the appropriateness, attribute a few tags to the contents, and georeference the location(s) mentioned in the project. Considering the efforts and the resources allocated to this activity, the task might seem hopeless but.... once a funded program is documented, the value added to the information is enormous. The main and more realistic objectives of eConservation are therefore to be in a situation where we can 1) start showcasing the benefits of such efforts by means of use cases to motivate donors to improve their own information and, 2) propose to donors a data structure and a protocol to follow when georeferencing projects (i.e. what do you do with trans-boundary projects with no information on how funds are split between beneficiaries, ...).
It is only when all main donors will be willing to make some additional efforts in documenting their own projects and to share this information in a centralized database that such fundamental tool could be considered. This proposal was discussed in a dedicated side event at the COP-13 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity but there is a long and dusty road from a proof of concept to an operational system.
Still, even if imperfect, the deployment of such a platform is easy to set up, if only the donors had the reflex to do some small additional effort in providing more details regarding the projects they are funding.
2) A new social network focusing on location
I already stressed in another post (see below "Adopt a Pixel") the need to have a different social network where connections are made according to a location of interest rather than on social economic criteria years ago. This is also from the 5 tools or platforms I have in mind the most ambitious one to develop. I am still convinced we urgently need a place where people can debate about the current and future management of a given area. A place where a Brazilian investor can exchange with a local community, a place where a Baka pygmy can discuss about land management with a PhD student from Finland doing her thesis on deforestation. A place where an amazonian indigenous community can exchange with an Australian mining company. We have to forget about country borders that are pure historical artifacts and instead think in terms of biomes and ecoregions that are impacted by everyone living on this planet. Such a platform would require quite some investment but the language barrier which was a major obstacle years ago is fading everyday with the incredible progress made by automatic translation engines.
Be aware that with such platform, you eventually might end up talking face to face to a neighbor or to people commuting with you every day!
The other essential tools I have in mind will be discussed later on in detail and I therefore will only mention these very briefly hereafter.
3) A single entry point to access free and open-access biodiversity data
Biodiversity data are still scattered around in a variety of platforms and many have restrictive licenses, e.g. no commercial use is allowed. Any restriction in accessing such data is jeopardizing the effective use of essential information for decision making, especially by those industries, companies or even small companies that have a direct impact on our environment and this needs to change.
4) A citizen science version of the Protected Planet and DOPA.
Protected Planet (https://protectedplanet.net/) and the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA, https://dopa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/explorer/ ) are complementary platforms providing reference information about protected areas but these platforms do not capture any information from people on the ground. Do the documented protected areas really exist? Are they exposed to any threats? Are they well funded? Are the boundaries subject of conflicts? This gap could easily be filled and would create a powerful bridge between policy-makers, decision-makers, donors and the people on the ground.
5) A tool answering "What is the impact on biodiversity of losing area X?"
How many threatened species would one affect by building/farming in a given area? How much carbon would we lose? How would this loss of a natural area impact ecological connectivity, nature's blood system? These basic questions are actually not too complicated to answer and a generic platform providing such information freely and openly to everyone would be quite useful, if only to highlight areas under highest pressure and of highest biodiversity value.
As I indicated, the three proposals above will be discussed later in more detail in a Part 2 of this post. In the meantime, I would be curious to hear more about other ideas and needs. I believe quite a few people would also want to see a new platform valuing biodiversity in an economical point of view, but this is another debate.
Happy biodiversity day!
Grégoire
PS: clumsy sentence rewritten in the intro on May 25th. Link to DOPA updated on August 7th.
Project Manager
5 年This is a general and agree with your deductions and options. Part of donor funding should be accessed to continually update this central repository of knowledge (not data). Linking people so they can collaborate to reach all parts of the world to solve sector, suburb, regional or country problems would be a very cool leap. Sorely needed.
Thank you all. I'll add a couple of thoughts too: migratory animals for instance have no concept of human borders or national boundaries ~ utterly meaningless. All of Oceania is the habitat for sea turtles in the Pacific. Seabirds too. #PCJensen thank you for the mention. Peter Daley is in Australia, not Aotearoa (NZ). But everything you wrote about logistics is correct. We are very remote ~ snail mail often takes 18 months to arrive. Even trying to get electronic 'paperwork' together is very challenging. We do our best.
BA English, St. Thomas University, Miami Gardens, FL $PCJensen9
5 年Great work, Grégoire Dubois. There's a lot of information to absorb in this article, I imagine part 2 will be even meatier. Many great contributions in comments as well. Tracking funds: I worked as a compliance specialist at a non profit early education center serving early education sites in Gainesville, FL. One of the first projects was to create a 'matrix' of all the federal, state, and local laws related to our work (funneling funds to schools). It was an immense undertaking which our accountant particularly appreciated. I imagine most funding organizations don't actually have such a reference guide. Perhaps your work will inspire the creation of such a tool which would assist in building in greater transparency.? Data collection: 1. I'm currently helping Dr. Michael White?find a way to get dried fish samples from the Cook Islands to Mr. Peter Daley in New Zealand to test, for free, the samples for radiation contamination. Peter is constrained by NZ import laws and Michael is constrained by logistics hampering the transport of the samples to NZ. Even though they aren't so distant, it's far more complicated than just popping a package into a postal box. It seems that, for scientific purposes in rural/remote areas, customs laws and transportation logistics need to be addressed.? 2. I was informed yesterday that a US university is currently writing a grant to fund an expansion of their program of collecting and testing samples from overseas for radiation contamination. As the project manager said, it's a long time coming. What I have learned from the outcome of Fukushima blowing up, is that there are laws in Japan and the US which prevent people (doctors, nurses, journalists, researchers) from speaking out about their findings. Such gag orders are discriminatory and must ultimately be in violation of human rights laws. People need to know about radiation impacts in order to protect their health.? 3. The CTBTO has a large and historic collection of radiation data, but they have strict guidance about who can access that data and how the data can be used. This is simply ridiculous and harms humanity's ability to protect health.? 4. The WHO is another agency which has data, but, they are beholden to the IAEA whose obvious mission is to promote nuclear energy and the use of nuclear radiation tools and products in health and agriculture. Once again, this is ridiculous and harm's humanity's ability to protect health.? With this 'information infrastructure' in place, our ability to collect, analyze, and share (open source) data is choked into silence, which benefits only a few. Can your work and tools be used to bring about wholesale change in these areas? The WHO should be independent, CTBTO data should be open sourced, samples from remote places should have streamlined procedures in place (drone pick up & delivery? and different import laws), researchers, journalists, medical professionals and students ought be able to speak freely about toxic elements that threaten our genome, and, finally, funding organizations need tools to assist them in complying with relevant laws/ rules/ codes/ guidance.? Thank you for this article, it is inspiring.?
Multi-disciplinary innovation
5 年One of the needs that was identified a couple of decades ago from work on climate emergency and industrial transformation was for establishment of maps of sites of hazardous materials (storage sites, toxic dumps, etc) as well as detailed maps of industrial and other sites (nuclear reactors, petro-refineries, wells, mine shafts, etc). With sea level rise of 2 – 5 metres this century and much greater rises next century, together with attendant storm surging, many of these sites and installations, often at coastline, are likely to be breached. Capabilities for identifying installations, stores, and transport/dispersion pathways as well predicting potential impacts on conservation sites and biodiversity in general will be essential in the coming decades as increasing levels of infrastructure crippling occurs. Even now, it is likely that many toxic dumps are likely to have been ‘forgotten about’, and may already be discharging, and so it is essential to put in place processes of discovery so there is good transparency. This is about being prepared now with the right information & knowledge before the events.
Climate & Env Mediator & Facilitation Consultant, ClimateCulture. Posts and comments are my own.
5 年Excellent piece for all working in Biodiversity/Ecosystem Services/Nature Conservation