Indigenous Peoples Harness Space Technology to Stop Deforestation

Indigenous Peoples Harness Space Technology to Stop Deforestation

Satellite observations have long been used to detect deforestation, and a new study shows that giving Indigenous groups greater access to these data can improve response times and reduce tree cover loss.

In the Peruvian Amazon, deforestation is being driven by illegal gold mining, logging, and clear-cutting for cultivation of crops like palm oil and coca. Between 2001 and 2016, the Peruvian Amazon lost nearly 2 million hectares of forest.

More than one third of the Amazon rain forest falls within the territory of more than 3,000 formally acknowledged Indigenous groups, but the size and inaccessibility of Indigenous Peoples’ territory in the Amazon mean that timely alerts from satellite data can make a big difference in their existing antideforestation patrol efforts. For example, alerts can allow communities to take preventive actions, such as blocking the rivers where loggers entered.

To determine the effectiveness of timely deforestation alerts derived from recent satellite data, Indigenous Peoples in the Peruvian Amazon teamed up with scientists and conservation organizations. They analyzed deforestation rates in Indigenous communities with access to alerts about deforestation in their territory and compared them with rates from groups using other patrol methods.

The findings, published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), showed that from 2018 to 2020, there was a notable reduction in tree cover loss among communities with access to satellite data.

The study suggested that governments should provide Indigenous communities greater access to satellite data. “As a policymaker, you want to know: If a monitoring method works on this site, it might work somewhere else,” said Tara Slough, assistant professor of politics at New York University and lead author of the paper.

Training Locals to Monitor Forests

In 36 out of 73 participating Indigenous communities, researchers trained local people to use a combination of two smartphone mapping applications (Locus Map and Global Forest Watcher), with monitors receiving monthly deforestation alerts from Peru’s national GeoBosques deforestation-monitoring platform, which uses NASA’s Landsat data. They could then head out with the phone, document the problem area, see what activities were going on, and make a report to the community council.

Wendy Pineda, a project coordinator for Rainforest Foundation US—the rights-based forest protection organization that funded the research project—has been working for more than a decade to bring more high-tech monitoring tools to Indigenous communities.

For this study, each of the noncontrol communities designed its own monitoring plan, tailored to existing and potential threats in its area. For example, a Ticuna community in Buen Jardin de Callaru that was heavily threatened by land invasion from coca farmers was encouraged to send its monitoring data of 7 hectares of deforestation to Peru’s Environmental Prosecutor’s Office. As a result, the invaders left, deforestation halted, and the community is now the beneficiary of a reforestation project.

“Indigenous Peoples have done [forest monitoring] for their entire existence and will continue to do so, only now they can be more decisive, thanks to technology.” “Indigenous Peoples have done [forest monitoring] for their entire existence and will continue to do so, only now they can be more decisive, thanks to technology,” Pineda said. “Satellite imagery and technology…only complemented and enhanced the effectiveness of their plans.”

Jorge Perez is president of the Indigenous People’s Organization of the Eastern Amazon (ORPIO), which has long fought for land rights and preventing deforestation. ORPIO’s member communities participated in the study, and according to Perez, they are the ones who know the territory, know its problems, and feel the impacts of deforestation.

According to Perez, the satellite information aided Indigenous monitors in responding more quickly to sites where illegal deforestation was taking place. More immediate notification also allowed authorities, like the Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office, to build the case against those engaged in illegal activity.

“Communities are experiencing the positive impacts of the intervention, so many continued to monitor even when funding ended and the pandemic began,” Pineda said.

Empirical Evidence

Ane Alencar, director of science for the Amazon Environmental Research Institute who wasn’t involved in the PNAS study, said empirical evidence of deforestation reduction helps generate strong arguments and ideas for policymakers. “Communities are experiencing the positive impacts of the intervention, so many continued to monitor even when funding ended and the pandemic began.”

“In this case, the availability of real-time information on deforestation…seemed to end up empowering the communities to do peer enforcement,” Alencar said. Consistency is key, she warned: Over time, the effect of community empowerment may fade away if offenders perceive that there are no consequences.

One criticism of the PNAS paper is that none of the authors are from Peru, raising the specter of colonial science, in which local collaborators contribute to a major paper in a prestigious journal published by scientists from the Global North but don’t receive the academic benefits of being named as authors.

“I think it is very important to engage local actors or experts in scientific studies, since they are aware of the context and they are able to redirect and enrich any discussion or conclusion, while avoiding any possibility of misinterpretation of the results,” Alencar said.

Back in the Peruvian Amazon, Perez said he wants more climate funding, including a recent commitment from Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to arrive directly to Indigenous communities to help them to continue to defend their territory.

“Even if funds run out, we are able to continue to use this knowledge,” he said.

—Andrew J. Wight (@ligaze), Science Writer

Indigenous Peoples Hold Master Key to Transformative Recovery Based on their Knowledge

Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, participated today in a high-level forum organized by FILAC, where she stressed the urgency of reaffirming the centrality of indigenous peoples’ rights and of making the “Good Living” paradigm a reality.

Indigenous peoples hold the master key to a transformative post-COVID-19 recovery based on their knowledge, their collective conscience and their worldview, Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), stated today during a high-level event organized by the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).

“It is crucial to reaffirm the centrality of indigenous peoples’ rights, the standards of which have been enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international human rights instruments. Although it is undeniable that progress has been made in recent decades on their recognition and collective rights in all the region’s countries, important gaps still remain,” Alicia Bárcena indicated.

For that reason, she said, “it is critical that recovery policies emphasize the collective rights of these peoples and that their pivotal themes be participation and consultation with a view to obtaining free, prior and informed consent for any measure that would affect them, including the participation of indigenous women and young people.”

The senior United Nations official was one of the main speakers at the High-Level Political Forum entitled “Challenges in times of pandemic: A dialogue for ‘Good Living,'” which was inaugurated by Gabriel Muyuy, Technical Secretary of FILAC. Participating along with Alicia Bárcena were Elisa Loncón, President of the Constitutional Convention of the Republic of Chile (via video); Freddy Mamani, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Plurinational State of Bolivia; Mirna Cunningham, President of the Directive Council of FILAC; Jessica Vega, Chair of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus (GIYC); and Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, General Coordinator of COICA.

During her presentation, ECLAC’s highest authority recalled that Latin America and the Caribbean is the region that has been hardest hit by the pandemic, since it represents 8.4% of the global population but accounts for 32.5% of worldwide deaths caused by this disease. She added that the region is facing a profound asymmetry versus the developed world, especially in terms of access to vaccines and the impacts of climate change.

Alicia Bárcena underscored that indigenous peoples experience the structural inequalities, discrimination and racism that characterize our region, creating a scenario of greater vulnerability and risk in the face of COVID-19 and the effects of the crisis.

She noted that, according to the Social Panorama of Latin America report for 2019, the poverty rate of indigenous persons was 46.7% while that of extreme poverty was 17.3%, equivalent to double (2.1 times) and triple (3.1 times) the respective rates for the non-indigenous population in the set of nine countries that had information available.

ECLAC’s Executive Secretary warned that the pandemic has prompted differentiated and intersectional impacts on the fulfillment of indigenous peoples’ right to health and to life, as well as on other dimensions of their economic, social, cultural, territorial and environmental rights, having particular repercussions for indigenous women, children and young people, indigenous older persons, and indigenous persons with disabilities.

In that context, she stressed the need to have better sources of disaggregated data, to understand the pandemic’s true impact on indigenous peoples and to guide public policies.

“The lack of disaggregated information is also a manifestation of discrimination,” she emphasized.

Alicia Bárcena also warned that the tensions and conflicts stemming from the lack of guarantees for indigenous peoples’ territorial rights and external threats have continued to rise.

She specified that even before the pandemic, between 2015 and 2019, ECLAC identified 1,223 conflicts in 13 Latin American countries, arising from impacts on indigenous peoples’ territorial rights that were associated with extractive industries, including mining, hydrocarbons, energy and monocultures. In fact, nearly two-thirds (63.7%) of them stemmed from mining (43.5%) and hydrocarbons (20.2%).

“These are the challenges of ‘Good Living,’ because our societies are returning to the privileges that deny rights, to concentration, to a neoliberal model that we have not managed to get beyond. These historical inequalities are accompanied by the dispossession and plundering of lands, and of the resources of indigenous peoples,” she underlined.

She also stressed the urgency of making visible, and condemning, processes to criminalize indigenous social protest in the face of investment projects that affect their territories.

“The most dramatic expression of the violation of their rights is the murder of defenders of the life and territories of indigenous peoples. Between 2015 and the first half of 2019, 232 indigenous leaders and community members were killed in the context of territorial conflicts, many of which were associated with the extractive industry. This means that on average, 4 indigenous defenders of rights are killed each month in Latin America. This is a grave matter,” she affirmed.

In that regard, she pointed up the relevance of the Escazú Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, “the only treaty that protects the life of environmental defenders,” she stated.

The high-level official asserted that “Good Living” requires recognizing the relevance of territory, the right to culture beyond language – that which provides a conscience and historical memory, spirituality, a vision of life; the right to a pertinent education and to indigenous peoples’ development with respect for their identity as rights holders, and to territorial rights.

“As the Vice President of Bolivia, David Choquehuanca, has said to us, the obligation to communicate, to dialogue, is a principle of ‘Good Living,’ but on the basis of parity. Actions and measures are needed. The most important thing is that nothing be done about you, without you. As we often say: nothing about us, without us,” she affirmed.

Finally, Alicia Bárcena expressed her solidarity with the thousands of inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean who have had to face the pandemic’s effects in conditions of marginalization and exclusion.

“I send a special greeting to the silent guardians of the land and biodiversity, who in the midst of this crisis have unswervingly continued their work to defend the environmental and social rights of us all,” she concluded.

Donovan Peoples-Jones has found his confidence and more from Browns coordinators

BEREA, Ohio – Donovan Peoples-Jones has been a star of Browns training camp and it hasn’t been difficult to find someone to offer up praise for his performance.

Count offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt among those people. Van Pelt said Peoples-Jones, a sixth-round draft pick in 2020, came back this season with some confidence, something lacking this time a year ago.

“I think last year early on, it was not there, and he was still trying to learn the system and learn what his role was,” Van Pelt said. “After the success he had through last season and see him come back and have a great camp, he is a guy who has great position flexibility. You can plug him in at all three spots of the wide receivers, and he knows exactly what to do. He has had a really good camp and really proud of him.”

Peoples-Jones played in 12 games in 2020 with two starts and caught 14 passes for 304 yards and two scores. He made a handful of memorable plays, including a deep touchdown in Tennessee and catching a deflected pass for a two-point conversion against Baltimore on Monday Night Football.

Jed Wills is improving fast

Browns defensive end Myles Garrett (L) and offensive tackle Jedrick Wills battle at the line of scrimmage during Day 18 of training camp.John Kuntz, cleveland.com

Second-year left tackle Jedrick Wills Jr. wasn’t shy a few weeks ago in calling himself “trash” compared to this year when he watches tape. Van Pelt didn’t go that far, but he’s seen improvement in last year’s No. 10 pick.

“I have seen great improvement by him. Another guy who was a rookie with big eyes, getting great coaching from (offensive line) Coach (Bill) Callahan and (assistant offensive line) Coach (Scott) Peters and then basically finding a way to get through the season, being available for a lot of it and playing left tackle for us,” Van Pelt said, “and then Year 2 coming back, understanding what is expected of him and understanding the areas that he needs to improve and he has looked really good.”

The defense is about leadership

Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Joe Woods (R) with assistant special teams coach Doug Colman watch strong safety John Johnson make a catch in coverage drills, August 24, 2021, at CrossCountry Mortgage Campus in Berea.John Kuntz, cleveland.com

New safety John Johnson III has already established himself as a vocal leader in the defense’s back end. It’s not just Johnson, however, offering leadership. Defensive coordinator Joe Woods pointed to players added at all levels of the defense.

“John is a great leader,” Woods said. “We brought in guys who are very professional and who have been leaders on teams that they have been on. That is John in the secondary. If you look at the linebacker position, (LB) Anthony Walker and the D-line position, (DE) Malik Jackson – I had him in Denver. Those guys have been great additions to our team, and they are doing a great job.”

Is Chase McLaughlin the kicker?

Chase McLaughlin kicks a field goal during Day 4 of training camp.John Kuntz, cleveland.com

No one has actually come out and committed to McLaughlin. He is, at the very least, the last man standing in the competition we followed all camp after Cody Parkey was placed on the reserve/injured list and eventually waived.

“(Executive Vice President of Football Operations and General Manager) Andrew (Berry) and his staff will discuss those type of things,” head coach Kevin Stefanski said on Monday after announcing Parkey was going to IR. “We are all still battling for jobs on this 53. It is still a great competition at all of these positions.”

Thursday, special teams coordinator Mike Priefer was asked directly if the Browns had their kicker. His response: “Chase has done a great job this camp. It was a really good competition.”

Priefer took some time to praise Parkey before adding, “I like Chase. I am confident in Chase. I do not make those final decisions, but this is a big week for him. We kicked yesterday. He did a great job. We will kick tomorrow and then we will kick Sunday.”

One option for the Browns came off the table on Thursday if they were looking to add another leg. The Giants traded Ryan Santoso to Carolina for a conditional seventh-round pick.

The return competition is still going

Cleveland Browns wide receiver JoJo Natson eludes the tackle attempt of Jacksonville Jaguars safety Andre Cisco on a punt return in the second half, August 14, 2021, at TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville. John Kuntz, cleveland.com

The quest for a kick and punt returner is still going strong. It’s one of the things left to watch when they travel to Atlanta on Sunday night to face the Falcons.

“JoJo (Natson) has done a nice job. Demetric Felton has done a nice job,” Priefer said. “We have trained him to be a punt returner, which he did not do in college. We know what Donovan (Peoples-Jones) can give us. We know what D’Ernest (Johnson) can give us. They both are quality return men who can give us what we need on game day.”

Priefer said he doesn’t see a clear-cut kick returner right now, but then he singled out a certain receiver who ran a 4.26 40-yard dash.

“Anthony Schwartz is a special athlete who I would love to be our kickoff returner,” Priefer said. “We just have not been able to use him a lot lately.”

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