US: Esri has announced a partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) to develop a set of tools that will help communities map and manage the ecosystems around them through a collaborative design and planning approach, aided by GIS software. These tools will help communities map, monitor, and better manage their natural resources from community forests and wildlife reserves to water catchment and flood control areas, as well as human settlement, agriculture, and agroforestry spaces.
Started as a project around Gombe National Park in Tanzania in 1994 where Dr. Goodall led her pioneering research on the wild chimpanzees there, the Jane Goodall Institute’s community-centered conservation approach called Tacare partners local communities and governments to create sustainable livelihoods while planning for and advancing environmental protection. Incompatible expansion of agriculture, human settlements and harvesting of forest products, as well as disease, wildlife trafficking and the illegal bushmeat trade are the primary threats that have led to the endangered status of chimpanzees across their range in Africa.
“A key component of our success is that we work to help villagers find ways to make livelihoods that do not destroy the environment, and help them understand that protecting the environment not only conserves wildlife, but their own future,” said Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace.
JGI’s Tacare approach achieves conservation results and addresses these threats by first consulting communities about their needs and priorities, and working together to collaboratively plan for and implement land use practices that enable their own development, while also contributing to conservation. JGI uses Esri’s ArcGIS platform and Survey123 mobile app to help communities and governments in western Tanzania, Uganda, and other countries in Africa to plan, monitor, and protect chimpanzee populations in local protected forests outside designated national parks.
“Conservation at the community level is essential to sustaining our natural world,” said Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president. “Protecting global ecosystems cannot work on a global scale unless it starts locally, which is why we are honored to work with our friend and partner, the Jane Goodall Institute, on this collaboration, leveraging their years of experience working at the local scale in pursuit of conservation, balanced with the needs of human communities.”
“We adopt and put in the hands of local communities the best available technologies and tools relevant to support conservation in practice,” continued Dr. Goodall. “The geospatial technologies that Esri provides will enable us to scale up our projects so that we cover hundreds of villages, ensuring that information is actionable and relevant to decision-makers to help design and manage landscapes that better support people’s livelihoods, as well as wildlife.”
Jane Goodall will join Jack Dangermond along with fellow renowned conservationist E.O. Wilson for a discussion at the opening keynote of the 39th Annual Esri User Conference in San Diego, California. They will talk about what they have learned over their legendary careers helping to protect species and ecosystems, as well as the role geospatial technology plays in the future of global biodiversity.
