Technological advancements have brought the world great things and hugely changed the way we live. Our planet is probably less happy with this development, and little explanation is needed there. Technology has made us more productive, efficient, and rich. But all that comes at a cost because now we drain the earth of its resources in order to produce the goods that fulfill our never-ending greed, keep our bellies full and our houses warm.
Of course, technology is not the problem. In the case of the environment, it is very likely that it will be part of the solution. That is why I want to present you with examples of how two of the most discussed technologies could help us protect the planet and its inhabitants.
Blockchain
In 2018, WWF in Oceania started a project to stop illegal fishing and slavery in the fishing industry using blockchain technology. Blockchain makes it possible for consumers to track the entire journey of their fish – or other products – which revolutionizes the current systems of approval and traceability. Exactly knowing where a fish came from should stop illegal fishing activities and protect the fishes population.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
In China, the WWF and Intel are working together to protect wild tigers and their habitats using Artificial Intelligence (AI). One of the most important components of achieving this goal is being able to oversee in tiger population numbers and allocation trends. China was already using sophisticated camera traps, which trigger and make a photo when they detect movement, to monitor the tigers. The problem was that these cameras could easily be triggered accidentally, for example by other animals, and take hundreds of thousands of photos. Analyzing all these photos would be impossible. The AI technology makes it possible to ‘teach’ the camera to only take a photo when a tiger is in the shot. Moreover, AI makes it possible to detect individual tigers because the stripes on their fur have a unique pattern, just like human fingerprints. All this information is tagged to each photo, making it way easier and faster to analyze. This is good news for the tigers because the more we know about how big each population is and where they are, the better we are able to defend them.
Discussion
Of course, Blockchain and AI technology have many more uses that could help us protect the environment. In addition, there are many more interesting and innovative technologies that could also achieve this goal. How do you think Blockchain and AI can be used to save the planet? What new, interesting innovation is going to be used to deal with this issue? Do you really think a technology or an innovation is going to be the solution to climate change and environmental damage? Or do you think something else will (i.e. change in government policy or human behavior)?.
Let me know in the comments!
Reference
https://www.wwf.org.nz/media_centre/?uNewsID=15541
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/here-s-how-technology-can-help-us-save-the-planet/
View at Medium.com
http://programmes.putin.kremlin.ru/en/tiger/multimedia/photos/57594
Dear Mink,
thanks for the post I think you are tackling a very relevant issue here.
I want to go a bit deeper into the blockchain fish example. How excatly will the trace of teh fish be uploaded into the blockchain?
Even though it might be possible from a technological perspective, who is going to force the fishing industry to implement it?
I feel like this is a project which can only be successful if it is backed up by the governemnt and it becomes illegal to fish without integrating its trace into the blockchain.
Acording to this article:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/five-nations-take-the-lion-s-share-of-the-world-s-fish
Most fish is caught in China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Spain. Especially Japan has shown reluctance lately when someone tried to restrict their fishing industry. Do you think that there is hope for such projects when the big fishing nations do not support the initiative?
Also do you think there are enough consumers who are willing to carry the additional cost from the implementation of this technology which will most likely be imposed on them?
Thank you Mink for the great blog entry! It is truly interesting that while technology advancement and globalisation has such a strong negative impact on our environment it also has the potential to positively impact it. I think that this topic would be highly interesting to research more in depth to understand all opportunities we have not discovered so far.
Interesting reading! I also strongly believe that technologies will play a crucial role in tackling global environmental problems in the future. Given the size and frequency of today’s problems, especially large-scale solutions are needed to achieve a sustainable impact. Use cases primarily based on technologies can be such solutions: Once successfully developed and tested in one location, these solutions can serve as a blueprint and then be scaled to other regions of the world or adapted to similar problems.
For example, the blockchain use case described above could also be deployed in the fishing industry in Argentina or Canada, or be adapted to agriculture, e.g. for the cultivation of coffee beans or cocoa beans.
Hi Mink, very interesting post! Thanks for sharing insights on how technology can help make a positive societal impact. It is inspiring to think of these practical applications, especially if you realize how new these technologies still are and what potential they have to create more positive impact in the future!
I think it’s good that we have these powerful tools, as the problems we’re facing are also in desperate need of solving. Personally, I am really passionate about fighting climate change. I tried to explore technology as a tool to tackle climate change in my bachelor thesis. Specifically, I looked at how people can collaborate on crowdsourcing platforms to fight these complex problems. In literature, problems such as climate change are often defined as ‘wicked problems’ or ‘grand challenges’ with unique characteristics that require different problem solving strategies. I explored how ”the crowd’ shared and integrated their knowledge on a crowdsource challenge to tackle food waste (https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/food-waste/top-ideas). I concluded that crowdsourcing has the potential to help us find better solutions for these complex problems.
Also, it was really inspiring to read all the ideas on the platform and see how everyone was trying to help each other to reduce food waste. If you’re interested to read more or help (technological) ideas to make a positive societal impact, I would definitely recommend to check out the OpenIDEO platform and their challenges:
https://www.openideo.com/?_ga=2.92517589.993518328.1569668169-1245544478.1568276246
Hi Mink,
It’s a very interesting blog post to read! Although I think changes in government policy and human behaviour are key to saving the planet, I really think that technology is playing a very important, supportive role in it. I think it’s a good thing that opportunities are explored to view options to use technology for this cause.
Often, in business administration we talk about how to increase profits out of using emergent technologies, such as AR, but I have never thought of it before to apply it to the case of climate change. I think it’s good to look at the use of technologies for this use.