3rd Tech4Nature Summit held on the 50th anniversary of World Environment Day
SHENZHEN, June 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — On the 50th anniversary of World Environment Day, Huawei and IUCN highlighted smart solutions to support effective and fair management and governance of protected and conserved areas, and the growing importance of technology for monitoring endangered species and protecting their natural habitats.
Huawei and IUCN have crafted a vision for protected and conserved areas to harness digital technology to help achieve global biodiversity targets. At this summit, the Smart Protected Areas Technical Paper, jointly developed by Huawei, IUCN China and the Chinese Academy of Forestry, was launched to share the development blueprint for smart protected areas based on the experience of those in China.
The key to wildlife protection is understanding the distribution, behaviors, and seasonal trends of species, and how human activities can impact their patterns. This requires comprehensive data, which can be challenging to obtain in remote and hard-to-reach areas, often exacerbated by extreme weather conditions. In early research and data collection initiatives, scientists went into the field and set up camera traps to capture images. These cameras needed to be maintained, their batteries replaced and memory cards replaced and tested. All of these processes are time and labor intensive, often resulting in data and images that are several months old.
The implementation of next-generation digital technologies, such as cloud computing, IoT, mobile Internet, big data, and AI, enables the acquisition of data and interaction with it in real time. This is the key to improving the intelligent detection, analysis and management of species protection and area-based conservation, making them more effective and consequently better for nature conservation.
Since 2019, Huawei has worked together with more than 30 international partners, including IUCN, to apply digital technologies to achieve effective conservation and restoration results in 46 protected and conserved areas around the world, from the Hainan rainforests, in China, home to the world’s rarest gibbon, to the wetland oasis of Italy and the coral reefs on the east coast of Mauritius.
For example, within the framework of Tech4Nature in Mexico, where Huawei partners with IUCN, C Minds, the Polytechnic University of Yucatan, the Rainforest Connection and the local community of Dzilam, more than 30,000 photos, 550,000 audio recordings have been collected and numerous videos of wild animals. An algorithm was developed and trained to help identify the various species, especially the jaguar, and to date the team has identified 119 species, including 5 individual jaguars.
“We have gained a lot in the past three years of cooperation. During this time, Huawei has collaborated with us to demonstrate how to use new technologies responsibly to protect nature. We at IUCN are excited to have a long-term partnership with Huawei as a technology leader with to help achieve global targets such as conserving at least 30% of the planet’s land and water by 2030,” said IUCN Deputy Director General Dr. Grethel Aguilar.
The main objective of the Technical Document on Smart Protected Areas is to achieve the effective conservation of protected areas and the sustainable management of natural resources. Based on this objective, the Document identifies seven main scenarios, which include ecological protection and restoration, resource management and scientific research, among others.
In these identified scenarios, four key capabilities need to be implemented, including comprehensive and multi-dimensional ecological insight, integrated multi-network communications that can adapt to complex terrain, intelligent analytics that can process large amounts of data from multiple sources, and the ability to apply the results of the analyzes to the operations and management of protected areas. This blueprint proposes a comprehensive solution architecture for smart protected areas based on the latest advances in digital technology.
“Biodiversity loss and climate change are two interrelated global environmental crises that require coordinated responses. While protecting nature, science and technology can also help thousands of industries with green development and better cope with climate change,” he said. Tao Jingwen, Chairman of Huawei’s Board of Directors and Chairman of the Corporate Sustainable Development (CSD) Committee.
Peng Song, Senior Vice President and Chairman of Huawei’s ICT Strategy and Marketing Department, said, “Earth is our only home. Digital technologies can help us protect nature reserves more effectively and promote sustainable resource management. Our original intention is to bring together the practice of science and technology to help protect nature and to work with partners to promote the smart construction of more nature reserves.”
According to the World Economic Forum’s New Economy of Nature Report, more than half of global GDP, approximately $44 trillion, depends on nature and the related services it provides. However, climate change and the loss of biodiversity threaten the survival and sustainable development of humanity. A new economy of nature could generate an annual trade value of up to 10.1 trillion and generate 395 million jobs by 2030.
To explore the future potential of Smart Nature Conservation, the summit brought together TECH4ALL partners, including the government of Mexico’s Yucatan State and the Mexican innovation agency C Minds, IUCN China, WWF Italy, Rainforest Connection and Shandong Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve.
Click to see the summit.
Background
Launched in 2020, Tech4Nature is a Huawei and IUCN nature conservation initiative, which aims to enable more than 300 protected areas in the world to assess their conservation success following the IUCN Green List standard and digital technology.
June 5 is the fiftieth World Environment Day. World Environment Day, spearheaded by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and celebrated on June 5 every year since 1973, is the largest global platform for environmental public outreach. Millions of people around the world celebrate this day. In 2023, it takes place in the Ivory Coast.
About TECH4ALL
TECH4ALL is Huawei’s long-term digital inclusion initiative and action plan. Enabled by innovative technologies and partnerships, TECH4ALL is designed to help promote inclusion and sustainability in the digital world.
For more information, please visit the Huawei TECH4ALL website https://www.huawei.com/en/tech4all
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TECH4ALL Program Office Contact tech4all@huawei.com
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