ExCiteS case studies

In the last ten years, our interdisciplinary team has developed digital data collection tools for people with low technical literacy. With smartphones, farmers, agro-pastoralists, fishers, and Indigenous people can share their knowledge of the land. Unlocking people’ knowledge opens the way to develop “intelligent maps” bringing together mapping from space and mapping from the ground up.

Country	Challenge	Use of Sapelli
Brazil	Mapping land invasions on Indigenous territory	Ashaninka developed a Sapelli project to record illegal invasions by loggers, drug traffickers and poachers on their forest territory.
Brazil	Mapping fishers’ territories	Pantanal fishers developed this version of Sapelli to allow them to represent their traditional areas of fishing to claim tenure rights.
Brazil	Mapping restoration areas	Pantaneiros are helping to monitor restoration initiatives in the Pantanal. They use their local knowledge to inform about the effectiveness of the restoration activities.
Brazil	Mapping Change	Developing a Sapelli project with Guarani and Kaiowá communities who don’t separate nature from culture – showed us that environmental monitoring involves social and humanitarian monitoring too.
Cambodia	Monitoring illegal logging	This Sapelli-inspired forest monitoring tool supports the advocacy of indigenous Kuy and Khmer communities and their efforts to protect their forest and livelihoods (The Prey Lang app).
Cameroon	Anti-poaching and wildlife monitoring	As poaching and exclusion from conservation are key concerns of Baka and Nzime/Fang communities, Sapelli projects empower local people to report activities and monitor the forest around them.
Cameroon	Recognising Indigenous Territories	The Sapelli digital tool supports the recognition of the key role of Baka hunter-gatherers Indigenous people in protecting forests.
Central African Republic	Resource protection during logging	Bayaka and Sangha-Sangha Indigenous People developed a Sapelli project to protect their key forest and aquatic resources from damage during logging operations.
Ethiopia	Crisis mapping byaffected agro-pastoralists forfood security	Agro-pastoralists communities in the Lower Omo, co-designed a project to map their natural resources to address issues related to food insecurity, water inaccessibility and conflict.
Ghana	Combining Indigenous Weather-forecasting with Satellite Forecasts	Local farmers developed a project to collect indigenous ecological indicators and forecasts towards the development of climate services that combine indigenous and scientific forecasts.
India	Monitoring human-forest relations	Nayaka people together with local environmentalists, are developing a Sapelli project to monitor human-animal conflict, forest resources and landslide and floods-related damage in the forest.
Kenya	Citizen science for sustainable agricultural futures	Smallholder farmers in Western Kenya co-designed a project to map cropping patterns and challenges and share local knowledge about sustainable farming practices.
Kenya	Citizen science and botanical knowledge	A Maasai pastoralist community co-designed a project to map plant species distributions and the issues associated with each plant to address, among other, the problem of loss of botanical knowledge.
Namibia	Protecting water holes for wild animals from damage by cattle herds	A Ju|’hoansi effort to identify cattle herders invading their conservancy by photographing ear tags on cattle, with time, date and geotag to provide evidence to police.
Namibia	Monitoring and reporting on the health of wildlife	Ju|’hoan rangers using Sapelli to monitor and report on the health of wildlife in the conservancy for the purposes of setting quotas for sustainable hunting.
Nigeria	Land use messaging & mapping for collaborative Climate-smart Agriculture	Smallholder farmers co-designed a project to map their farms and report farming issues through WhatsApp to receive timely advice from agricultural extension officers and other farmers.
Republic of the Congo	Human – Wildlife conflicts	Local communities suffering crop damage caused by elephants, buffalo and apes developed a project to record the damage and report it to the relevant authorities in order to receive compensation.
Republic of the Congo	Conservation – IPLC conflicts	BaYaka hunter-gatherers developed a Sapelli project to record abuses against them by Eco-guards, to report on poachers and animal sitings.
Republic of the Congo	Community logging relations	Monitoring how logging companies are addressing their social obligations to communities, including FPIC negotiations and commitments made to communities.
Republic of the Congo	Participatory forest management	BaYaka hunting and gathering communities designed a Sapelli project to map key forest resources and community areas in an effort to participate in forest management within a logging concession.
Zambia	Mapping urban flooding and supporting rural livelihoods	Mapping urban flooding and Chikanda orchids to support sustainable livelihoods for women and improve Community Forest management.

Acknowledgements: This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 694767 and ERC-2015-AdG).

For further information please contact: f.moustard@ucl.ac.uk