Digital technology and human development: a charter for nature conservation

Abstract

The application of digital technology in conservation holds much potential for advancing the understanding of, and facilitating interaction with, the natural world. In other sectors, digital technology has long been used to engage communities and share information. Human development-which holds parallels with the nature conservation sector-has seen a proliferation of innovation in technological development. Throughout this Perspective, we consider what nature conservation can learn from the introduction of digital technology in human development. From this, we derive a charter to be used before and throughout project development, in order to help reduce replication and failure of digital innovation in nature conservation projects. We argue that the proposed charter will promote collaboration with the development of digital tools and ensure that nature conservation projects progress appropriately with the development of new digital technologies.

Keywords: Charter of best practice; Developing world; Information Age; Innovation; Mobile phone; Nature conservation.

Fig. 1

a Mobile phone charging station, Uganda; b car battery village phone charger, Uganda