Goals 14 & 15

June has been an eventful month for the SDGs and our little planet… World Environment Day on the 6th saw several climate action initiatives like tree planting events around the world. June 8th celebrated World Oceans Day... There was the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (themed ‘Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming’), which we attended in Kigali, Rwanda, last week... The SDG Calendar highlights Goals 13, 14 and 15 this month, i.e. Climate Action, Life below Water, and Life on Land. And today is International Day of the Tropics.

From the UN:

The Tropics are a region of the Earth, roughly defined as the area between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. Although topography and other factors contribute to climatic variation, tropical locations are typically warm and experience little seasonal change in day-to-day temperature. An important feature of the Tropics is the prevalence of rain in the moist inner regions near the equator, and that the seasonality of rainfall increases with the distance from the equator. The tropical region faces several challenges such as climate change, deforestation, logging, urbanisation and demographic changes.

Having been selected recently as Liberia’s official national digital addressing system, we have a good tropical country case study to explore some of the most pertinent challenges facing our part of the world, the Tropics, and how they can be addressed with SnooCODE.

Let's begin with the fact that only one-tenth of West Africa’s original Upper Guinean rainforest remains, and over 40% of that is in Liberia. Liberia is therefore recognised as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, rich in endemic and rare species. Less than half of Liberia’s rainforest however remains today. ??

According to the country’s National Adaptation Plan, non-climate factors like widespread poverty, high inequality and unemployment, and limited access to essential services (water, sanitation and energy) combine with climate change processes to create significant vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities are in turn "exacerbated by high dependence on natural resource-intensive sectors that are climate-sensitive – e.g. agriculture, fisheries, and forestry."

Top national environmental issues include the following: the deforestation of the tropical rainforest; hunting of endangered species for bushmeat; pollution of rivers and coastal waters from industrial run-off and raw sewage; burning and dumping of household waste.

Let’s explore the issues on Land first.

Deforestation of the tropical rainforest: Most deforestation in Liberia is caused by people trying to cover basic needs through shifting agriculture, small-scale logging and burning of charcoal, combined with industrial logging, mining and larger scale agricultural expansion. The logical way to tackle this problem is to pass laws protecting areas that are illegal for such purposes and enforce them. Enforcing these laws with usually limited manpower however presents another problem on its own. SnooCODE enables enforcement by facilitating drone surveillance of protected areas with little manpower. Type the 6-digit SnooCODE of any location into a drone integrated with SnooCODE, and the drone flies exactly there, captures required footage and returns without human intervention, obeying civil aviation rules. A technical application of SnooCODE outside of enforcement is data collection. SnooCODE can be used to log trees and tree cover to track deforestation – every tree could have its own special SnooCODE!

Poaching of endangered species: like with the above problem, SnooCODE-powered drone surveillance can be applied to enforce protection of endangered species in their known habitat. The system can also be used to track their movement. Thirdly, citizens (or more conventionally, trained data collectors) can be empowered to participate in citizen science projects where they use our SnooCODE digital signature photo app to take location- and time- stamped photos when they come across endangered species in different conditions, for comprehensive data collection and analysis.

Burning and dumping of household waste: Nearly 1M people live in the Greater Monrovia area, 70% of them in slums. There are 113 slum communities within the Cities of Paynesville and Monrovia and these areas are only growing... Within these areas, and across the Greater Monrovia, solid waste is a real challenge. The sector is challenged with inadequate waste management systems, poor engineering facilities, inadequate regulation, and insufficient logistical and human resource capacity to handle the enormous waste generated in densely populated communities. SnooCODE provides route optimisation and information verification solutions for better efficiency, cost reduction and accountability in waste management.

Now to the issues below Water. There’s one commonly cited:

Pollution of rivers and coastal waters from industrial run-off: In a 2004 UN environmental report, it was estimated that there were around 5,000 unlicensed and 1,000 licensed mining operations in Liberia. The report said the mines caused damage through the excavation of forests and riverbeds. The report noted that pollutants such as cyanide and mercury were used in the mining process, with these chemicals entering rivers. Sadly, it seems events like these persist today. Here is another time when SnooCODE-powered drones can be very useful to collect data and surveil water bodies around such sites for pollution.

We find that all the issues in one way or the other influence climate change, which prompts Climate Action, Goal #13. But we'll talk more about that another day... For ideas targeting tropical cities (like Monrovia) and strengthening their resilience with SnooCODE, see this article. Take care.

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