Drones, communities and nature: pitfalls and possibilities for conservation and territorial rights

Abstract

Since the early 2010s, small drones have become key tools for environmental research around the globe. While critical voices have highlighted the threat of ‘green securitisation’ and surveillance in contexts where drones are deployed for nature conservation, Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) worldwide have also begun using drones – most often in alliance with non-governmental organisations or researchers – exploring this technology’s potential to advance their own territorial, political and socio-ecological goals. Against this backdrop, this paper examines six different experiences in five countries where communities are using small drones in areas of high ecological and cultural diversity with international significance for nature conservation. We highlight the ways that communities deploy drones – both in terms of their motivations and actual use strategies. We also reflect upon the opportunities and barriers that IPLCs and their collaborators encounter in designing and implementing meaningful drone strategies, explicitly considering social, economic and political challenges. Finally, we consider the socio-ecological outcomes that community drone use enables across these sites along with the ways that drones engender more biocultural and territorial approaches to conservation through IPLC-led monitoring and mapping efforts. In conclusion, we suggest that effective, meaningful and appropriate deployment of drones, especially with IPLCs as protagonists in their use, can support nature conservation together with the recognition and protection of biocultural and territorial rights. Given the mounting demands for conservation to counter intertwined global socio-environmental crises, community drones may play a role in amplifying the voices and territorial visions of IPLCs.

Remote sensing biodiversity monitoring in Latin America: Emerging need for sustained local research and regional collaboration to achieve global goals

“…The challenge is to coordinate efforts, identify drivers of change and make all sources relevant for their context. RGB imagery consists of three bands (red, green and blue) and is often used for manual identification of features like land cover, organisms' presence and abundance, among others; it is a low-cost method commonly used mounted in UAV and has gained some track for its potential applications for citizen science and conservation (Ierodiaconou et al, 2022;Sauls et al, 2023). Multispectral and thermal imagery, spaceborne imagery like MODIS, Landsat, ASTER or Sentinel, among others; or at higher resolution from WorldView, Quickbird or SPOT (Anderson, 2018); collects data of between three and eleven spectral bands, allowing to capture more information on the spectral properties of the sensed landscape/objects.…”

Between monitoring and surveillance: Geographies of emerging drone technologies in contemporary conservation

“…This is vital, given the uncertainty about when monitoring becomes surveillance in protected areas, and what protections are required such that data collected for one purpose cannot be used for another. Yet critical readings of drones can also underplay their potential to democratise conservation practice in new kinds of citizen science (Gabrys 2020; Jepson and Ladle 2015), and novel applications in environmental justice projects, such as counter-mapping or Indigenous-led cartography projects (Paneque-Gálvez et al 2017; Sauls et al 2023). It is important to understand how and when drone technologies hold potential for changing decision-making; for deepening atmospheres of fear; for aiding securitisation; for entrenching stereotypes, and for establishing environmental justice.…”

“…For example, while aerial and drone technologies have been extensively conceptualised in contexts of new warfare, their potential for surveillance in environmental settings has been less well explored (Massé 2018). Meanwhile, a focus on the way drones as war-devices produce atmospheres of fear can pull attention away from their role as a tool in the defence of Indigenous and communally-managed territories (Sauls et al 2023). By bringing these literatures into dialogue, we advance a conceptualisation of the diverse potentials of conservation drones, while identifying routes toward more just or ethical practice on the ground.…”