Local | PANORAMA

Integrated approach to conservation and community empowerment

The local CBO, largely led by women, implements an integrated approach to conservation and community empowerment:

Mangrove Restoration: In December alone, 200 women restored 24 hectares of degraded mangrove habitat within four days—averaging 4 hectares per day.
Environmental Monitoring: Female patrollers lead regular patrols to detect illegal harvesting of marine resources (e.g. juvenile crabs and shrimp during closed seasons).
Financial Empowerment: Women like Alima provide training in financial literacy and savings through the Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA). This helps diversify income sources and reduces dependence on natural extraction.
Peer Leadership & Advocacy: Women like Soatombo encourage others in the community to join restoration efforts and take ownership of local conservation.

Women are highly motivated actors in conservation when given the opportunity, support, and community structures.
Combining conservation with financial literacy and livelihood support ensures long-term engagement and reduces resource pressure.
Local leadership and peer influence (as seen with Alima and Soatombo) are critical to mobilizing broader community participation.

Implementation

Local

West and South Europe

Swinging into action: French golf tees off for biodiversity conservation

Claire

PIGNON

A national-level collaboration between ffgolf and the National Museum of Natural History to valorise golf courses’ natural heritage

A clearly structured accessible programme encouraging golf clubs’ progressive improvement in biodiversity conservation

A credible tiered certification system enhancing the commitment and visibility of golf clubs’ actions for biodiversity

environmental monitoring devices

25 environmental monitoring devices and 21 geological hazard warning systems were deployed, integrating 3S technology (GIS/GPS/RS) and IoT to enable real-time monitoring, data visualization, intelligent analysis, and early warnings for:

Environmental factors: temperature, humidity, wind speed, rainfall, noise, PM2.5, PM10, negative oxygen ions
Geological risks: slope displacement and inclination
providing critical support for conservation and emergency management.

400 high-definition surveillance feeds were installed to:

Monitor and statistically analyze tourist capacity in real-time
Issue frontline alerts
Capture uncivilized tourist behaviors

Integrated systems include:

9 dual-spectrum PTZ cameras
10 fire lookout towers
25 facial recognition audio warning poles
10 drones (equipped per ranger station)
50 4G patrol terminals

Establishing a "Thermal Imaging + IoT Sensing + 3D Patrol" monitoring network achieving full-coverage fire surveillance.

Data Visualization: Uses 3S tech and smart analytics to visualize environmental trends, resource distribution, and wildlife data, enabling intuitive ecological assessment and science-based decisions.
Decision Support System: Analyzes big data to auto-trigger threshold alerts from field devices, generating protocols for fire warnings and pest control. Provides end-to-end digital support from monitoring to emergency response.
Fire Surveillance: Integrates drones, cameras, and satellite data for 24/7 fire/illegal act monitoring. Instantly alerts personnel, enabling smart-enabled early detection, rapid response, and scientific firefighting.

During heritage site conservation management, regulating uncivilized tourist behaviors—such as trampling vegetation or climbing barriers for photos—requires multifaceted awareness campaigns and strategic interventions to ensure a safe and rewarding visitor experience.

Local

Integrated Forestry Spatial Platform

Forest Fire Management Information System - Command and Dispatch

Xinjiang Tianchi Administrative Committee

Forest Fire Management Information System - Fire Equipment Inventory

Xinjiang Tianchi Administrative Committee

Mobile Patrol App

Xinjiang Tianchi Administrative Committee

Integrating historical forest resource surveys, monitoring data, and thematic research, a Smart Forestry Management Cloud Platform was developed. Through intelligent spatial data analysis, resource retrieval, rapid thematic mapping, customized reporting, and multi-temporal high-resolution imagery comparisons, it established six core modules:

Project Information Management
Collaborative Daily Operations
Dynamic Personnel Dispatch
Forest Conservation & Cultivation
Non-Commercial Forest Development
Full-Cycle Fund Oversight
achieving unified "One Map" forestry resource governance.

The Mobile Patrol App centrally manages rangers' patrol routes, attendance records, and field logs. It enables reporting, processing, and early warnings for 10 types of incidents, including:

Geological hazards
Flood risks
Fire threats
Illegal logging/mining
Poaching

This achieves comprehensive oversight of:
✓ Ranger information management
✓ End-to-end patrol process monitoring
✓ Real-time conservation status tracking

IoT Application: Deployed environmental/geological sensors with "3S + IoT" tech for real-time tracking of temperature, humidity, wind, rainfall, noise, PM2.5/10, ions, and ground displacement. Enables live ecological data collection. Combines satellite phones/field gear with patrols to monitor forests and illegal encroachment via human-device networks.
Remote Sensing: Integrated satellites/drones for "air-space-ground" monitoring. Quantifies fires, vegetation, biomass. Acquires high-res imagery for dynamic tracking and post-disaster evaluation.

Local

Integrated Forestry Spatial Platform

Forest Fire Management Information System - Command and Dispatch

Xinjiang Tianchi Administrative Committee

Forest Fire Management Information System - Fire Equipment Inventory

Xinjiang Tianchi Administrative Committee

Project Information Management
Collaborative Daily Operations
Dynamic Personnel Dispatch
Forest Conservation & Cultivation
Non-Commercial Forest Development
Full-Cycle Fund Oversight
achieving unified "One Map" forestry resource governance.

The Mobile Patrol App centrally manages rangers' patrol routes, attendance records, and field logs. It enables reporting, processing, and early warnings for 10 types of incidents, including:

Geological hazards
Flood risks
Fire threats
Illegal logging/mining
Poaching

This achieves comprehensive oversight of:
✓ Ranger information management
✓ End-to-end patrol process monitoring
✓ Real-time conservation status tracking

Local

Developing and Sharing Relevant Tools, Resources and Templates

YOLO resources screenshot

YOLO

To support Emerging Leaders programs, Nature United and community partners have developed many tools and resources to support communities in establishing, running and expanding their own on-the-land programs for Indigenous youth. The SEAS Toolkit was developed in 2017 by communities running Supporting Emerging Aboriginal Stewards (SEAS) youth on the land programs on BC's Central Coast, in partnership with Nature United. It is a resource for planning an on-the-land Indigenous youth program developed based on the unique culture and territories of First Nations on the BC Coast, that other communities can adapt to their specific contexts.

In more recent years, several one-off tools and resources have been developed by Nature United or shared out by community partners, in response to need and requests from on-the-land programs, including curriculum documents to link programs to school credits, financial reporting templates, and tipsheets on how to include mentorship opportunities in programs. These all now live on the YOLO (Youth On the Land Opportunities) Community network website in the resource library.

Strong relationships with community partners who are willing to share templates and information they have developed to address common challenges.
Creating spaces for communities to share documents they have developed with each other (e.g., a webinar to share curriculum documents developed in one place can inspire a program Coordinator in another place to develop their own curriculum, as well as facilitate a connection between two people working on the same thing).

Tools developed must be able to be easily customized to address the unique needs of local contexts.
Resource libraries must be considered living repositories where resources, stories and experiences of what has and hasn’t worked can evolve and grow over time. As more and more communities build youth on-the-land programs and share their experience, information must continue to be updated and revised to remain relevant. It is also important to remember that only a fraction of experiences and activities are captured in any given toolkit and may only reflect the needs of those who informed their development.
Sharing an abundance of information that meets the needs of a diverse group of communities must be balanced with presenting information in a clear and accessible way, to avoid overwhelming users and ensure resources are used by those doing the work on the ground.
Tools and templates can be useful on their own, but often need human connections and relationships to “animate” them and increase their use. Having facilitators or network coordinators available to walk communities through how to make use of resources can be invaluable.

YOLO Community network resource library

Peer to Peer Learning Connections for Coordinators of On the Land Programs Serving Indigenous Youth

YOLO screenshot

YOLO

Coordinators have offered feedback that being the only ones doing this work in their communities can feel isolating. We continue to hear from practitioners on the ground that they are hungry for opportunities and are wanting to connect and learn from each other across communities. People want to share practical details about their experience building and running an on-the-land youth program - where others got their funding or received their training. Having spaces to share what’s working and not working, They want to share challenges and to learn from each other.

The YOLO network fulfills a need for resource sharing and communication. The YOLO website features a map of on the land programs for Indigenous youth programs across the country, along with contact information for fellow Coordinators, who can sign up to participate in monthly virtual coffee hours and webinars to connect with others doing similar work. Many connections have already grown out of these coffee hours, with participants sharing tips and funding resources with each other, planning land-based camps together, and talking about getting together for exchanges in the future.

For the success of this initiative, we have learned the following factors are important:

Creating opportunities for strong relationships to be built.
Developing communications materials to help potential participants understand the value of the network.
Dedicating a position to coordinating the network and “network weaving” - creating connections between members
Creating accessible and engaging meeting opportunities for network participants (virtual, as well as in person - the value of in person connection is hard to replace)

The following are key lessons learned through the YOLO network’s experiences of creating opportunities for peer to peer connection among those running on-the-land programs for Indigenous:

People want access to others doing similar work to them, and the collaborations and support that comes out of spaces for people to connect in unstructured or lightly structured ways is amazing.
Having “network weavers” in dedicated positions to hold space for people to connect is important - someone needs to hold the role of organizing, inviting, facilitating connections, etc.

Having a strong advisory group to guide the network, its development, and direction has been very important. We are working toward ensuring there is diverse geographic, demographic and skills-based representation and including seats for Elders and youth. Considering how the advisory group can guide us toward ensuring the network is Indigenous-led in the future and grounded in what communities need and want are top priorities for the YOLO network

Supporting Indigenous Youth: Why On-The-Land and On-The-Water Programming is Important

YOLO (Youth On the Land Opportunities) Community network website

Smart Conservation Platform-Driven Sustainable Development: A Case Study of the Bogda Component, Xinjiang Tianshan World Natural

Xianglan

Integrated Forestry Spatial Platform

environmental monitoring devices

Partnerships (NEMA, NFA, Local Governments, Institution)

Picture of tree planting at Mountain Elgon

Tree planting in Mountain Elgon

NEme

Its purpose was for provision of tree seedlings, land and manpower/human resource

Collaboration in resource mobilization and implementation of the project

Importance of collaboration and partnerships
Importance of community engagements
Importance of proper planning

Planning phase

Implementation

Local

https://www.independent.co.ug/nema-starts-5-year-tree-planting-campaign-in-bugi…

4. Leveraging Expertise for Advocacy, Knowledge Sharing, and Technological Integration:

It is understood that effective conservation necessitates continuous knowledge exchange, unwavering policy advocacy, and the smart integration of modern technology.

Actionable Step: Actively utilize established platforms and networks to disseminate crucial information and influence policy. The role as Regional Vice Chair at IUCN CEESP, contributions to environmental law blogs, and appearances in environmental awareness videos are instrumental in this endeavour. Furthermore, focus will be placed on integrating

Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) to create advanced conservation strategies. AI can analyse vast datasets on ecological patterns, climate change impacts, and biodiversity trends, while TKS provides invaluable localized, nuanced understanding of ecosystems and sustainable resource management. This synergy can lead to more precise conservation interventions and predictive models.

Areas of Focus: Continue to lead international webinars and symposiums on critical environmental topics such as "Rights of Nature in the Anthropocene" and "Science and Environmental Law Interface." Dedication to advocating for environmental causes at international conferences and universities, fostering regional and global collaboration, is paramount.

In conclusion, by strategically intertwining environmental law and policy with the profound wisdom embedded in cultural practices and Traditional Knowledge Systems, and by judiciously integrating advanced technologies like drones for reforestation and AI for enhanced analysis, a more sustainable and equitable path to biodiversity conservation can be forged. This framework, passionately designed offers a powerful means to engage communities, influence policy, and ultimately secure a healthy planet for all future generations.