Closing the Environmental Monitoring Gap in Conflicts (Chapter in "Talking Tactics: Environmental Protection and Armed Conflicts")
Publisher: environmental SCIENTIST
Author(s): Doug Weir
Date: 2020
Topics: Data and Technologies, Governance, Monitoring and Evaluation, Programming
Countries: Colombia, Congo (DRC), Cote d'Ivoire
Armed conflicts can create acute environmental risks and lead to degradation that impacts ecosystems, human health and livelihoods. However, poor security conditions in conflict-impacted areas have historically hampered on-the-ground investigations into the environmental legacy of conflicts. In turn this has encouraged the use of remote sensing and open-source intelligence (data and information that is available to the general public) for documenting environmental harm, although without data from the ground these approaches have their limitations. The peacetime use of low-cost participatory scientific research – citizen science – has grown rapidly in recent years, and researchers are now exploring its potential applications in areas affected by conflicts.