Preserve and protect

Summary

This article introduces the Earth Defenders Toolkit (EDT), a digital resource helping Indigenous communities to protect their lands and preserve biodiversity. The toolkit includes tools like Mapeo, which aided the Waorani people in Ecuador in winning a legal battle to save rainforest territory. The EDT emphasises community-driven technology and storytelling to safeguard territories, culture and data sovereignty. The article also includes ways the reader can take further action to support the work of the EDT.

Reading time

Six minutes

The Earth Defenders Toolkit empowers Indigenous communities at the frontlines of the climate crisis with digital tools to help preserve territory, culture and language.

Whether massive flooding, uncontrollable fires or extreme temperatures, every day it seems like another catastrophic weather event is disrupting the planet. Every day I worry about the climate crisis and every day I feel helpless, yet shamefully paralysed.

I know actionable ways to lower my carbon footprint — reduce meat and dairy intake, drive less, fly less, consume less — but my contemporary consumerism sometimes feels like an addiction and, even worse, I make excuses for not doing what I know would be impactful. Why am I still eating cheeseburgers and researching cheap flights to Hawaii? Because I tell myself a convenient little story that you might recognise. I tell myself, that because I endured, nay survived, a global pandemic, that means I deserve to do whatever I want for, you know, just a little while longer.

I’m not proud of this behaviour and I’m sharing this shame because I know I’m not alone. But I also know that it is this, this carpe diem attitude, that will leave us with not many more temperate diems to carpe, and I’m scared. I am truly scared. And when I’m scared, change feels impossible.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people that are helping.’”

That quote is by beloved US children’s TV host Fred Rogers. I love this piece of advice, and I still follow it. As a little kid, I took his message to mean that, if I felt scared, I should look for a helpful adult to secure my safety. As an adult, I think it means something different. It means, get out of your self-sabotaging brain and look for examples of how to be helpful and become a helper yourself.

_{^{Above: Ben Tairea, Community Steward of the Earth Defenders Toolkit.}}

Meet the helpers

But, guess what, there are climate crisis helpers! Really innovative and courageous ones, too. Allow me to introduce you to the Earth Defenders Toolkit (EDT). Launched in June 2021 to provide free resources for communities facing threats to human and environmental rights, the EDT is a project of Awana Digital (formerly known as Digital Democracy). Awana Digital’s mission is to work in solidarity with frontline communities to defend their environmental and human rights. They partner with environmental defenders to co-design and co-develop tools used to defend critical ecosystems and Indigenous cultures.

I recently spoke with Ben Tairea, the EDT Community Steward, who contributes to the development of the EDT community and resources. Tairea is of Cook Island Māori heritage from the small Polynesian island of Mauke and the people of Ngati Nurau. In 2018, he co-founded Āhau, a tribal management and cultural archiving platform which is one of the tools listed in the EDT.

I asked Tairea why the EDT is impactful in addressing environmental concerns and he explained the significance of empowering Indigenous people to protect their lands. They guard 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity yet have some of the fewest legal protections of any population. The more we can do to empower Indigenous people, the more we can do to support the environmental protection of the planet.

_{^{Above: Leah Kintai, one of the Ogiek community mappers demonstrates Mapeo on Mount Elgon, Kenya Reserve.}}

Technology for justice

Tairea pointed me to a case study of the Waorani in Ecuador that shares how the Waorani people collaborated with Awana Digital to use the Mapeo mapping tool to map their ancestral territory. After four years of gathering map data, the Waorani made history when they won a legal case against the Ecuadorian government and saved 0.5m acres of Amazonian rainforest from oil drilling.

This is a project that uses science and technology to create justice, and not only that, the technology is built in solidarity, consultation and co-creation with Indigenous and marginalised communities in Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Communities find out about the EDT project through NGOs on the ground or from other Indigenous organisations. Anyone can go to the EDT website and use the toolfinder, which helps a user pinpoint the right tool for their use case.

_{^{Above: A Mapeo training workshop for Ogiek communities on Mount Elgon, Kenya.}}

Tools that work

EDT is committed to putting the tools into the hands of communities as opposed to having outsiders implement and use tools on their behalf. Tools have been built to work with bespoke needs, such as only having one computer, not having access to the internet or data security concerns.

Tairea says it is a dream of the EDT team to enable more tool developers. For example, when communities recognise that a tool isn’t supporting their needs, some have gone on to figure out the technology to build it or adapt an existing tool for themselves.

At the root of this work is giving people tools to help defend their homes by preserving territory, culture and language. The more they can defend their land, the better it is for Earth, the better it is for all of us.

A case study of the ECA Amarakaeri partnership in Peru shares how the Harakmbut, Matsigenka and Yine peoples are collaborating with the Peruvian National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State and other Indigenous organisations to monitor and protect their ancestral territories, using tools like drones and Mapeo.

Control rights

Data sovereignty is a key protection that EDT likes to highlight and encourage among community members. For example, Mapeo collects data that stays within a community, living only on devices used by the community, meaning what they end up with is basically a mini data cloud within their community.

Awana Digital may offer to work with the community to come up with a governance structure of that data, but it doesn’t have access to the data. In contrast, Google Earth is a very powerful tool but Google has its own position on what data they collect and how they use it; EDT, however, helps educate community members about potential threats of data mining, even using the example of the actual threat of natural resource mining to explain the potential dangers of data mining on the community.

Feeling inspired by the EDT project? Here are ways you can help:

• All the digital tools are built with open-source code. If you are a savvy coder or want to become one for a good cause, that knowledge is welcome.
• Language translations for the website.
• Computer donations.
• Open collective is a great place to contribute funds — all donations go directly to the Earth defender communities: opencollective.com/earth-defenders-toolkit.
• Most importantly, says Tairea, share the story about the Earth Defenders Toolkit! The more people who know how impactful it is and support the efforts of Indigenous people, the better our chances of safeguarding the health of the planet.

Story power

Tairea sees storytelling as one of the main values of the work EDT has facilitated. When a community is facing a threat like resource extraction, learning the stories of how others have used one of the tools, Mapeo, to defend their land in court is energising. He says technical manuals aren’t as helpful as you would expect and having people pore over technical documentation is not nearly as useful as storytelling, particularly since literacy is one of the challenges some of these communities face in navigating the technology. For those who can’t read or write, EDT is currently trying to secure funding to provide a user interface that is more focused on graphics and icons instead of words.

Liz Hansen is a writer and artist who works with ideas of belonging, loss and shame. 

This feature first appeared in RSA Journal Issue 3 2024.