Category: Conservation

Seizing the moment

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Back in the summer of 2005, a few friends and colleagues gathered in a corner of the Commonwealth Club in London. There were environmentalists, conservationists, communications experts, senior mobile industry executives, businesspeople and a couple of potential investors. What brought us there was the Galileo Masters, an annual competition which awards incubation opportunities for innovative satellite navigation applications. FrontlineSMS development was just about to begin, kiwanja.net was beginning to grow and it was a time rich in ideas. Not surprisingly for a meeting dominated by conservationists, it was an environmental application which won through. On 8th June 2005, our Mobile Environmental Monitoring Device was born. Our idea was this.

A Mobile Environmental Monitoring Device (MEMD), tracked by Galileo, would gather environmental information as people move through their landscapes. Indicators such as temperature, air quality, CO2 levels and air pressure would be recorded along with a fix on each location. For the first time individuals will be able to monitor their own exposure to local, relevant environmental hazards. Although initially a standalone unit, MEMD could converge with other technologies in the future, such as mobile phones and PDAs, providing enhanced functionality and communications ability. Each data set, gathered by each MEMD unit, would provide the user with a snapshot of the state of their environment

The idea was a bit on the grand side (see a bigger diagram) and we didn’t win, which was probably a good thing since none of us really knew if the thing was possible. MEMD was consigned to the archives like an earlier mobile payments concept (which has also since taken off). I started work on another project which later became FrontlineSMS, and life moved on.

The idea was well and truly buried until recently, when I came across this – the Nokia Eco Sensor Concept. According to Nokia:

Our visionary design concept is a mobile phone and compatible sensing device that will help you stay connected to your friends and loved ones, as well as to your health and local environment. You can also share the environmental data your sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data, thereby increasing your global environmental awareness

Interestingly, their monitoring device pairs with a mobile phone – which was what we had in mind – collects similar kinds of environmental data, allows it to be shared and aggregated and is designed to increase environmental awareness. It looks like we were just a little early on this one.

Ideas, of course, are one thing. Having the resources to execute them is another (something which, to this day, remains a challenge). Back in 2005 we were left to wonder if MEMD would ever have been possible.

Two years later, Nokia have shown us that it is.

Where motives dare

I once caused a stir during a regular Friday night pub outing in Cambridge when I dared suggest that some people only worked in international conservation because it meant they got to visit cool places and work with exotic animals. Although some were a little shocked at my suggestion and strongly disagreed (I was, after all, out with a dozen or so conservationists) the very fact that they responded in such a manner proves that I may have just hit a nerve.

There can be little dispute that entire industries are built around the act of ‘international conservation and development’. And few are headquartered in developing countries, an irony in itself. I’m not sure if there are any official figures – please get in touch if you know of any – but the international conservation and development communities must be a considerable source of employment in the ‘developed’ world. Large percentages of allotted funding seem to have the habit of staying in-country and covering items such as head office salaries, rents, vehicles, meetings and other overheads. Why, entire conferences are built around, and funded, on single conservation or development themes. I’ve even been to a few.

There is much talk of local empowerment, local context and local ownership, but such an approach rarely suits a machine which needs considerable amounts of funding just to keep itself alive. Gerald Durrell (pictured), the late pioneering conservationist based in my home island of Jersey, always maintained that his ultimate aim was to secure the future of endangered species and their habits, and then close down his zoo. Job done.

The global conservation and development movement could have learnt a thing or two from this guy.

Climate change: It’s getting personal

Out of the six billion-or-so people on the planet, two out of three probably aren’t in much of a position to do anything about it right now. They’re either too busy trying to get their next meal together, or scratching a living off a few dollars or less a day. We’re talking climate change, and as citizens of the developed world we’re being told more and more that we should take our share of responsibility and act. After all, we’re the lucky ones who can.

In the UK, climate change is top of the agenda. I’ve been back only a week and the newspapers are full of adverts and government advice on how we, as consumers, should be doing our bit. We have an incredibly important role to play, yet many of us still don’t yet seem to realise it. Why aren’t we getting the message? Is asking people to walk the short distance to a local shop really such a problem? Or to not leave things on standby? Or to turn the heating down a notch or two and put a jumper on? On the plus side people at least seem more aware of climate change. But getting them to take that next step and change their habits seems, for many, to be an “ask too far”.

In an attempt to speed them along, Christian Aid have recently been running some hard hitting newspaper campaigns in the UK (I’m not sure if they’re doing the same in the US). At the same time, interest continues to grow in devices such as “standby savers”, which will do what most consumers appear resistant to do and kill the power to their beloved consumer devices when they’re not being used. As a recent Economist article explains:

“Strange though it seems, a typical microwave oven consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food. For while heating food requires more than 100 times as much power as running the clock, most microwave ovens stand idle – in standby mode – more than 99% of the time. And they are not alone. Many other devices, such as televisions, DVD players, stereos and computers also spend much of their lives in standby mode, collectively consuming a huge amount of energy”

If doing something as simple as unplugging things at the wall at night reduces energy consumption in the home by as much as 20%, why are so few people doing it? Maybe breaking the global population down into segments may help us understand behaviourally why some people may or may not be interested – or care – about the climate change issue.

Here’s a very rough attempt for starters:

We start with a world population of: 6 billion
We deduct those unable to engage for economic reasons, leaving us with: 2 billion
We deduct those who don’t believe climate change is happening, leaving: 1 billion
We deduct those who believe in it but don’t think it’s ‘our’ doing, leaving: 600 million
We deduct those who believe it’s ‘our’ doing but not causing problems: 450 million
Deduct those who think it’s ‘our’ doing and a problem, but don’t care: 375 million
Deduct those who think it’s ‘our’ doing and a problem, but feel helpless: 300 million

On the basis of these very, very rough figures, it looks as though only 300 million people, or approximately 5% of the total world population, would actually be willing or able to change their behavioural habits based on the climate change issue. For the environmentalists, this segment would be classed as “in the bag”, so-to-speak. We have a number of segments above this hardcore group, and these are the ones needing to be targeted by advertising and educational campaigns. Clearly each segment would require a different ‘marketing’ approach based on a range of unique drivers for their non-engagement, and maybe this is what’s been missing.

I wonder if anyone is working on this?

What next for the Inconvenient Truth?

Al Gore has done an amazing job of publicising the global warming phenomenon. Road shows, documentary films and books have all at one time or another been conduits for his environmental message. And powerful it is. But the problem remains little understood, it seems, in the American press. Many of those that bother to take any interest still maintain that global warming is a myth, or some kind of conspiracy by the Greens, or just plain wrong. The truth, inconvenient as it may be, is that there is absolutely no dispute among scientists that the planet is warming. Whatever chart or computer model you look at quite clearly shows that the environment is warming, that it started to increase at an unprecedented rate following the industrial revolution, and that last year was the warmest on record (even beating 2005 which, ironically, was previously the warmest).

The dispute is whether or not human activity is the cause of this unprecedented warming, or whether what we’re seeing – or should that be feeling? – is just part of a natural cycle. But it makes a complex subject even more difficult for everyday folk to grasp when even the press don’t seem to be able to explain the basis of the argument properly. Maybe it’s another ploy by lobbyists, that strange ‘phenomenon’ that seems to dominate so much of American politics.


Today the west coast of the United States, around California, was several degrees warmer than it should have been. I had a great time chilling out in my VW camper van. Bees were busy pollinating newly bloomed flowers (not a good sign) and people were busy walking around in t-shirts, eating ice cream, enjoying the sunshine. Ski resorts further inland were shut just like many in Europe, with absolutely zero snow to speak of. And experts interviewed for one of the national TV stations didn’t seem to think it had anything to do with global warming. No wonder people on the street are confused. In a nation which more than any needs to take serious action, they aren’t even at the point of acceptance, let alone action. By all means dispute the causes of global warming, because democratic processes allow that, but don’t deny that it’s happening, please! That doesn’t help anyone.

If Al Gore was to write a sequel to his ‘Inconvenient Truth’ it should probably be called ‘Cruel Irony’. Because the cruel irony of the whole global warming saga is that it’s going to be those people, and most likely those countries, which have done least to contribute to the problem that will suffer the most. Once again, Africa looks like being particularly hard hit. But in one further twist, Australia – one of the few industrialised countries which sides with the United States and disputes global warming, and refuses to even discuss curbing greenhouse emissions – is right now suffering what many believe to be its most severe drought in a thousand years. Politicians, fueled by public opinion, increasing concern and a steep rise in farmer suicides, have finally begun facing up to the possibility that something really is happening. For many, if this is the future for Australia then something needs to be done, and fast. Better late than never.

The United States has suffered its fair share of adverse weather over the past year or so, with the destruction in New Orleans dominant in most people’s minds, and a record hurricane season to boot. But many Americans haven’t yet had their ‘Australia moment’, nothing major enough to cause a big enough shift of opinion. But how major does it have to be – bigger than Hurricane Katrina?

That change will come. Americans won’t be immune forever. But for all of our sake, please make it sooner rather than later. The clock is ticking for all of us.