×

Our award-winning reporting has moved

Context provides news and analysis on three of the world’s most critical issues:

climate change, the impact of technology on society, and inclusive economies.

What do drones, orangutans and gold mines have in common?

Friday, 31 July 2015 06:07 GMT

A drone flies over the archaeological site of Cerro Chepen as it takes pictures in Trujillo August 3, 2013. In Peru, home to thousands of ancient ruins, archaeologists are turning to drones to speed up sluggish survey work and protect sites from squatters, builders and miners. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo

Image Caption and Rights Information

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Drones allow forgotten communities in forests and mountains to document who lives on the land and what it's used for

What do orangutans, illegal gold mines and Peruvian artifacts have in common? The answer is drones.

Fixed-wing airplanes and helicopters - unmanned and often no larger than the model planes flown by hobbyists - are the latest tools revolutionising how land use is monitored and mapped in the remotest corners of the world.

These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are fast, easy and relatively cheap. They allow forgotten communities in forests and mountains where land rights go unrecorded to document for the first time who lives on the land and what it's used for.

Over the past five years UAVs, commonly called drones, have surveyed land in the Amazon forests of Guyana where illegal gold miners are denuding the landscape, in Borneo where Dayak people confront corporate land grabbing for palm oil and the aluminium ore bauxite; and in Peru where the Ministry of Culture is seeking to preserve its rich archaeological heritage.

And their uses go far beyond mapping. India is using drones to track tigers, and Indonesia to protect orangutans. The United Nations flies drones in the Democratic Republic of Congo to follow rebel movements, and in Nepal to assess earthquake damage.

"Drones open up potentially a very exciting opportunity for the democratisation of data collection," said Peter Rabley, head of the property rights initiative at Omidyar Network, the social impact investing firm.

They empower people to collect data quickly about land holdings, illegal mining and logging, poaching or environmental degradation, without waiting for a formal government survey.

"The allure of this tool to allow that self empowerment and formalisation of people by themselves is too great an opportunity to pass up," Rabley said at a New America conference it helped sponsor last week in Washington on using drones for property rights, human rights and global development.

They have proven their worth. Land Alliance, a U.S. non-profit, has used them to resolve titling issues on almost 1 million acres in a Peruvian province, enhancing self governance.

"This is superfast. One, two, three - we are in, take the picture, have the community verify the boundaries, get them involved in the process and out to the government in 10 days," said Janina Mera, Land Alliance researcher.

In Albania, Walter Volkmann, president of Micro Aerial Projects LLC, said he surveyed 23 hectares in three hours, work that would have taken three or four weeks for a traditional land surveyor with a measuring tap, rods and an instrument with a rotating telescope called a theodolite.

Many hurdles remain, however, before drones become part of the basic toolkit for securing property and human rights for marginalised communities. Here are a few of them:

  • Flight range: Copter drones are getting smaller and cheaper – you can buy one with a camera for as little as $50 on Amazon.com – and they are easy to launch. But flying time is brief - 10 or 15 minutes - and their range short. Planes have longer ranges but are costlier and require a flat airstrip.
  • Power: 24-hour electricity is rare in remote areas, creating challenges for powering the drone, downloading data and printing maps, which are essential if communities are to see the work and resolve disputes.
  • Sight limitations: Imagery is excellent, more detailed than satellites, and they capture moments when the satellite eye is dark. But they cannot penetrate dense tree canopy to reveal paths, rivers and human activity. Drone data often must be combined with other data sources to be of value.
  • Data analysis: Software to analyse the data easily and quickly has not kept pace with the hardware. Sorting through data can take days.
  • Manpower: Community participation is essential to gain acceptance of the technology. But that requires training. The simpler the design, the easier it is to repair and maintain in remote areas. The same goes for software.
  • Legal rights: Drones raise a host of complicated issues over intelligence collection, privacy rights, permission to fly over private lands and of course safety concerns.

One person's democratising tool is another's spy machine. Drones excel at gathering images, but their potential to act as the humanitarian in the sky requires more work.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

-->