Smartphones promoted as a tool for indigenous forest protection (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Smartphones promoted as a tool for indigenous forest protection

By: Andrew Davey, special to mongabay.com
July 23, 2012

[image: Inline image 1]

Ranger using a camera phone on patrol in Java. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.

Smartphones beeping in the woods may be a welcome presence that augurs the
increased ability of indigenous communities to be stewards of their own
biodiverse forests. Representatives of these communities and their
supporters have advocated that international conservation policies like
Reduced Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) be
increasingly managed by the communities themselves. A new strategy in this
effort is to train local residents to use smart phone 'apps' to collect
geographic data and photographs, allowing them to monitor the health of
forests essential to their livelihoods, according to a report by the Global
Canopy Program. Local data can then be incorporated into national databases
so they become linked with remote sensing data. The Global Canopy Program
argues that the technique will create a more collaborative and transparent
monitoring system while bolstering community forest management practices.

Read more:
http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0723-davey-smartphone.html#ixzz21fPt83hM
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