Trends in Mobile Use: Environmental Conservation

1. Trends in Mobile Use: Environmental Conservation By Kinkade, S and Verclas, K.

2. Around the world, mobile phones are being used in the environmental arena – from efforts to promote wildlife conservation to educating and influencing consumers about the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions. • In order for environmental programmes to be successful, all members of the community need to be involved and committed to their success.

3. Case Studies • Text messaging to save trees • “Infolines” • Environmental monitoring with mobile phones • Protecting wildlife and human wellbeing

4. Text messaging to save trees • According to Greenpeace, 300 000 hectares of native forest are cleared in Argentina each year. • Greenpeace Argentina used web, mobile phones and publicity on television to gather 1,5 million signatures for a petition to support La Ley de Bosques, or the Forest Law. • The mission of this campaign was to form a large database of supporters without leaving any form of carbon footprint. • A similar method was used in Buenos Aires in the form of the Zero Waste Law.

5. “We mobilised our database of movilactivistas even from inside the Congress Building several times. City politicians from Buenos Aires are used to being pushed by Greenpeace, but this was a national campaign and representatives in Congress are not used to our pressure. Our constituents made some 300 calls an hour to legislators. That definitely made an impression” (Nadal, in Kinkade & Verclas, 2008:45)

6. Challenges • 1000 euros per month on text messages • Large database calls for some segmentation based on individual interests

7. “Infolines” • Infolinesprovide just-in-time information about the environmental impacts of companies and products. • In South Africa, we have a service called FishMS (The Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative) • There are similar initiatives in the form of Climate Change ,Healthy Toys and airTEXT

8. Challenges • Limited funding • Expensive messaging • Gathering and compiling comprehensive data that is reliable, well indexed and ready for queries

9. Environmental monitoring with Mobile Phones • The World Health Organisation estimates that more people die annually from the effects of air pollution than car accidents. • Mobile sensing – also known as “participatory sensing”, “urban sensing” or “participatory urbanism” enables data collection from large numbers of people in ways that previously were not possible. • In the vein of this, Eric Paulos of Intel Research in California created a study whereby a small group of taxi drivers in Accra, Ghana, were recruited to run tests on the air pollution in the city.

10. Challenges • Hardware is quite expensive to make, distribute and maintain. • Problems with the divulging of personal locations, thus invading privacy to a certain extent.

11. Protecting Wildlife and Human Wellbeing • The Laikipia District of north central Kenya comprises a patchwork of small farms, large ranches, privately owned conservatories and government land. • It is also home to some 5000 elephants. • More than 3000 incidents of conflict between human and animals occurring annually.

12. Solution? • Push-to-Talk technology, which acts as a kind of walkie-talkie. • This added function has impacted hugely on the locals • Game rangers could re-direct migrating elephants due to early warning systems. • Collective pressure from the locals meant that game rangers and officials were forced to be accountable • Empowering the community.

13. Challenges • Finding the right partners in the venture • Getting the local population involved and committed • Phones using the technology needed to be charged more frequently • Training locals to use the technology

14. Thank you! • Reference: Kinkade, S. and Verclas, K. 2008. Wireless Technology for Social Change. Washington, DC and Berkshire, UK: UN Foundation - Vodafone Group Foundation Partnership