Huawei-Kenya and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in partnership with Kenya Wildlife Service today launched a Tech4Nature project to monitor and protect coral reef and biodiversity in Kenya’s Kisite-Mpunguti Marine Park and Reserve.
Aligned with Huawei’s TECH4ALL initiative and the IUCN Green List, the objective of the three-year project is to strengthen monitoring and management efficacy of the protected area. Located on the southern coast of Kenya, Kisite-Mpunguti Marine Park and Reserve face a number of nature conservation challenges. These include:
Illegal fishing and insufficient human resources to effectively patrol the area.
A lack of remote monitoring of the reserve’s three coral islands coupled with pressures created by tourism, as the fringing reefs are popular diving sites.
Limited community awareness of the importance of reef and biodiversity protection.
Insufficient communications network infrastructure for underpinning tech-driven monitoring.
Speaking during the launch, Huawei-Kenya’s Media Director, Khadija Mohammed Ahmed underscored the importance of leveraging on technology and innovation to solve pressing global challenges.
“Climate change and biodiversity loss are threatening the health of our planet and placing our own longevity in a precarious position. However, advances in technology are offering humanity and our home a lifeline: innovative thinking and smart solutions are already helping to mitigate some of the world’s most pressing environmental problems,” said Khadija.
Underwater cameras, photogrammetry, and audio monitoring technologies will be deployed to monitor marine life, including the biomass and population of parrot fish. In many coral reef ecosystems, parrot fish are a keystone species that, due to their diet, help prevent coral from being smothered by seaweed and algae. The solution will also monitor substrate cover in the reef ecosystems, seagrass cover, and the occurrence of green turtles and bottlenose dolphins, which are classified on the IUCN Red List as endangered and vulnerable, respectively.
“The technology we are bringing here is extremely important because it is the first one that it will be used in Kenya marine conservation. It will be the first monitoring instrument and data capturing and analysis in the marine protected area. It is also an opportunity to help the park to obtain green list certification to support sustainability agenda that most tourists like and as well as to ensure our future generation enjoy the benefits of the Marine parks” Innocent Kabenga, Country Representative-IUCN Kenya Country Office.
AI trained to recognize specific target species by sight or sound will provide real-time data-driven insights into the behaviors, populations, and distribution of biodiversity in the reserve and reef ecosystem. The system will also be able to identify boats used for illegal fishing, and send alerts for rangers to intervene in near real time.
A digital power solution and improved network connectivity covering the park and watch tower will enable the rapid transmission of collected data to a cloud server for analysis by AI.
The project will be implemented in partnership with Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI). Based on the project’s data-driven insights, the Tech4Nature partners will be able to develop targeted conservation measures for the reserve.
“For us to deliver our mandate of protecting and conserving our wildlife both terrestrial and in the marine ecosystems, you have to understand your resources very well. We are partnering with Huawei and IUCN to deploy underwater cameras to acquire some data on marine mammal, corals, fisheries to make informed decisions. The advantage of this technology it can be deployed in wider area that we couldn’t patrol every single day to get data for day and night for us to make good, informed decisions”. Adan Kala, Senior Assistant Director, Coast Conservation Area-Kenya Wildlife Service
As well as the technical side of the solution, the project will include community outreach to raise awareness about biodiversity changes over time and the presence of different species, including those that are threatened, vulnerable, or endangered.
The site will also be assessed against the IUCN Green List Standard, with the goal being that the reserve obtains Green List certification.
