The recently concluded IUCN World Conservation Congress at Abu Dhabi was a real eye-opener for me. It was my first time at such a huge conference, with over 10,000 participants ranging from government officials, academics, Indigenous Peoples and other civil society advocates, technology companies, and even royalty at the opening ceremony.
Given my interest in the use of technologies, especially those involving big spatial data, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the sessions I attended mostly aligned with one of these two themes. And it was remarkable how, despite all convening in the same, albeit large space, these themes remained rather disparate.
The presence of technology companies was clear, ranging from more well-known actors like ESRI and Google/Google Earth to newer entrants like Dunya Analytics and Conservation X Labs. Big international NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy, BirdLife International, and the Jane Goodall Institute also presented at sessions on their spatial data platforms and the creation/incorporation of increasingly high spatial and temporal resolution spatial data that will help us make better conservation decisions. One would gather from these sessions a sense of technoscientific optimism, that with our advanced technologies including geospatial Artificial Intelligence (AI), better and more data, we can more quickly identify areas of greatest risk as highest priority areas to resolve the problems that conservation face – widespread habitat loss, the 6th mass extinction of non-human species.
In many sessions, the speakers recognised the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, with Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) being mentioned with regard to the deployment of camera traps and acoustic sensors. They also frequently highlighted need to make complex data more accessible and easier to understand – for communities, but also for biodiversity-adjacent companies, with passing mentions of data ownership and sovereignty (to remain with communities).
At some of the sessions in the Indigenous Peoples pavilion (a vibrant, thriving space for many of the Indigenous Peoples in attendance at the congress), speakers acknowledged the benefits of technology, especially with participatory mapping of territories (Mapeo had multiple shoutouts across the congress in different spaces), for forwarding Indigenous Peoples rights. At one particular session around strategies for Indigenous Peoples, Katielee Riddle (University of Waitako) highlighted the existence of the Digital Sequence Information regulations, specifically that geographic origins of genetic sequences are rarely recorded, making it near impossible for Indigenous Peoples to exercise sovereignty over relevant data. The CARE principles (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) for Indigenous Data Governance developed by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance also had several mentions across different thematic sessions.
Yet, most speakers rarely considered the issue of data composition and who has the power to decide what constitutes data, especially when relevant to the indicators for various GBF targets. Data, and maps in particular, are still taken and pushed in discourses as objective and authoritative, without giving space to the possibility that what is represented or not represented within the data itself may well cause biases that produce harmful outcomes.
Given many presenters’ emphasis on the urgency of the planetary crisis, the value and importance of speed in delivering solutions appears to take precedence, giving tech adoptees and advocates more sway. However, I would argue that it is precisely in these moments that we should take the time to consider more carefully what exactly is necessary to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises, because we cannot, in one breath, echo claims that Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold the wisdom to better stewarding our shared planet, and in the other, call for more money to be poured into technologies for delivering speedier solutions. Perhaps it is time for the ‘Slow Conservation’ movement (mirroring the ‘Slow Food’ movement), not because we do not recognise the urgency of the crises with which we are faced, but because it is this very rush we are forced into by colonial capitalism that ultimate drives the problems we are trying to tackle.
