Tech for biodiversity is great but not at the cost of forest communities: Anita Arjundas, Executive Director, ATREE

Anita spoke to indianexpress.com on the tech innovations in the field of biodiversity and the challenges that technologists and biodiversity researchers face while maintaining a balance between the benefits of tech innovation and its possible impact on forest communities. Edited excerpts:

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you tell us about how technologists and biodiversity organisations are collaborating on identifying problems and coming up with solutions?

Anita Arjundas: Technologists and biodiversity organisations are collaborating in many ways. One such example is the global RE-FOREST-ER consortium, which is competing for the internationally renowned XPRIZE Rainforest. It brings together the skills of geospatial analytics, rainforest restoration, and large commercial eDNA facilities to use remote sensing and cloud-based geographic information systems, AI algorithms and eDNA analysis for sustainable conservation. These XPRIZE challenges are global and such incentives have brought about radical changes in technology.

Anita Arjundas

In India, machine learning, artificial intelligence and open-access platforms are helping us answer questions at a scale and in ways that were not possible earlier. For instance, ATREE has been invited to join the CoRE Stack initiative led by IIT Delhi and IIT Palakkad to help communities enhance their natural resource capabilities. CoRE Stack combines publicly available data and machine learning to create a data-driven approach to understanding the social-ecological characteristics of landscapes. It also helps communities propose natural resource management action plans through community-friendly digital tools.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: How are robots, drones and sensors making the life of a conservation organisation simpler? Can you give some examples?

Anita Arjundas: Robots, drones and sensors are helpful in tackling environmental challenges in inaccessible terrains. These technologies have various applications, from remote monitoring to the collection of biological material and mass reforestation.

Remote monitoring through drones, robots and sensors has certainly lowered the financial and logistical costs of monitoring, but it might be too early to say that it has simplified our lives.

For instance, the Assam Forest Department is using sensor-based cameras to monitor vehicular speed reasonably well along the national highway that passes through Kaziranga National Park, but this also necessitates setting up a control centre to monitor these cameras. Similarly, we tried installing sensors to monitor lake health in Bangalore a few years back, but they stopped working within a couple of days because they quickly formed a biofilm of algae in the lake’s nutrient-rich environments.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: There is this concept of the Internet of Wild Things; how does it work on the ground? Apart from remote monitoring what does it do?

Anita Arjundas: The Internet of Wild Things (IoWT) takes the Internet of Things (IoT) concept and applies it to the natural world. It uses sensor-equipped devices deployed in animal habitats to get data on wildlife and their environments. In India, researchers, government and local institutions use passive acoustic sensors to monitor sites and track ecosystem restoration at sites in the Western Ghats and Central India.

At ATREE, our scientists who focus on movement ecology use radio collars and tags to assess how habitat changes affect local and long-range movement of animals and migratory birds. These sensors have helped us understand how movement impacts human-wildlife interactions and local livelihoods and how movement of animals and migratory birds itself responds to changes in habitat and land use. Recently, Tamil Nadu installed sensor-based cameras that detect elephant presence near railway tracks and alert railway officials so they can respond quickly and consistently, reducing the chances of accidents and elephant fatalities.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you tell us about how bioremediation tech works and some success stories either in India or globally?

Anita Arjundas: Bioremediation technology is indeed promising in the context of lake restoration. Examples of such technologies include floating islands and constructed wetlands. These systems utilise the microcosm within the root zone of plants to remove excess nutrients and toxic metals from the water. Additionally, algae, particularly cyanobacteria, which were once considered problematic, can now be harnessed to uptake nutrients. The harvested algae are then processed into ingredients for everyday consumer goods.

ATREE’s water scientists have made use of constructed wetlands to create cost-effective solutions for wastewater treatment in the Jakkur Lake and are developing a similar system in Venkateshpura Lake in Bangalore.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: There is a lot of discussion on crowdsourced monitoring and citizen science. Does it really work or is it a feel good story?

Anita Arjundas: The smartphone has democratised the process of data collection and helps in crowdsourced monitoring and citizen science. Scientists and researchers now detect patterns and processes much faster and at lower costs than ever before. For instance, citizen science data has helped the SeasonWatch team detect signs of shifts in some trees’ flowering and fruiting patterns, which is likely to be in response to climate change. SeasonWatch is an India-wide citizen science project following the patterns of emergence and maturation of leaves, flowers and fruits on common tree species of India. SeasonWatch monitors the annual flowering, fruiting, and leaf-flush cycles of over more than 130 common trees using citizen science.

Another example is the State of India’s Birds report, which uses over 30 million observations uploaded by more than 30,000 birdwatchers on Cornell University’s eBird platform. This citizen-sourced data allows the evaluation of the distribution range of 942 Indian birds. ATREE’s scientists have been part of this effort to assess the conservation status of bird species in India.

Governments have also recognised the power of these initiatives. For instance, the Government of Tamil Nadu’s pioneering policy on invasive species management highlights MIAP- Mapping Invasive Alien Plants, an ATREE and Keystone Foundation-led initiative to map multiple invasive alien plants using citizen science.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: There is a trend towards making open source tech and open hardware for biodiversity conservation and research. How does it work?

Anita Arjundas: Open source software and data through satellite imagery have been prevalent in biodiversity conservation and research for a while now. Over the last few years, cloud computing platforms like Google Earth Engine have taken this one step further by removing the need for high-cost computing and data storage infrastructure. This has helped us track long-term ecosystem degradation and map threatened open-natural ecosystems for the whole country.

Other initiatives, like MeITY’s Bhashini platform are creating an AI-based approach to bringing knowledge and insights in India’s multiple languages to local communities. On the flip side, there have been surprising developments, such as the disappearance of Google Earth’s free archive of historical satellite imagery, which helps scientists, students and researchers track and validate land use and land cover change across the country.

Despite the use of multiple technology platforms like drones, thermal cameras, camera traps and sensors, the hardware component remains largely closed. However, this may change in the future as technologists work more closely with conservation organisations.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: There are reports on using facial recognition tech for animals to prevent poaching. Does it work with animals?

Anita Arjundas: Any recognition technology depends on hours of data collection, and this is true for data on animals as well. Such extensive data collection makes it easier to identify animals with distinctive patterns. Over time, AI will improve the accuracy and speed of this effort, but it is also important to be mindful of the potential for misuse of this technology, especially with regard to the legitimate rights of the forest-dwelling communities to access the ecosystems that surround their villages.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you tell us about ATREE’s work in community engagement for conservation and on creating online databases?

Anita Arjundas: ATREE has a rich history of using tech to build databases on India’s biodiversity, identifying patterns and processes, and prioritising landscapes and species for further action.

In the context of online databases, ATREE’s view is that the knowledge commons being made available to multiple stakeholders is critical to biodiversity conservation, management and community engagement. We are in the final stages of developing the Checklist of Indian Plants, a comprehensive database of around 15000+ species of plants vetted by international experts.

ATREE’s Conservation Genetics Lab uses e-DNA analysis in multiple ways — to map invasive alien fishes, assess competition between wild and domestic herbivores, and to identify adulteration compounds and levels in a host of food and medicinal products.

ATREE’s researchers actively synthesise open-access data to map ecosystem degradation to prioritise sites for conservation. Our plan is to use technology to define problems at scale, prioritise where scarce resources should be used, monitor and manage on-ground action, and most importantly enable communities to access data and information that can be used by them.

For example, our scientists have developed a mobile app that allows Forest Rights Committee members to upload Community Forest Resource (CFR) Rights claim boundaries as part of their CFR rights claim-recognition process. The app (Aamcho CFR Mapping) draws on publicly browsable maps and boundary information built by ATREE’s researchers through a Web GIS platform. This combined with on-ground capacity building has enabled Community Forest Resource rights in over 55,000 hectares in India.

ATREE has deeply engaged with the communities in the Western Ghats, the backwaters of Kerala and the Eastern Himalayas. This has given us novel and rich insights into these landscapes’ opportunities (e.g., cropping patterns, wild and endemic foods, medicinal plants) and challenges (e.g., invasive alien species, forest rights and land tenure). We have started working on putting together a community-friendly, locally sensitive information portal. As we build this data portal, we will also explore ways to add cutting-edge, AI-based functionality for local language support and a chatbot-type interface that will serve as a blueprint for other such community-focused, site-specific portals under the Biodiversity Collaborative.

Why Anita Arjundas?

Anita Arjundas serves as an Independent Director in the Board of Governors of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development and on the India Advisory Board of The Nature Conservancy.

She was associated with the establishment and governance of Krea University, in its formative phase. She has previously served on the Steering Board of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Urban Development & Services’ and catalysed the establishment of the Mahindra TERI Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Habitats, an open source research hub for energy and water efficiency.