Working on our Unusual Solution: The Ethics of Drone Use

For the last few months, we’ve been working on something very different from the other projects we’ve done so far. We are trying to put together a process for the creation of implementable, inclusive and contextualised ethical guidelines for the use of drones.

Like many new technologies, drones have come into use before the regulations for their use are in place. They have the potential to implement impactful and interesting work but are also capable of being gravely misused. While there are legal regulations in place for the use of drones in India, ethical safeguards have not been considered in these regulations. Drones have already begun to be used without consideration for consent or privacy. Their unethical use can greatly exacerbate existing power imbalances. In our own work, we often face ethical dilemmas when working on projects that involve the use of drones, or the data generated by them. However, considering that some estimates indicate that there are over 6,00,000 civilian drones in India, when we say no to a project, someone else will say yes. A longer-term solution is necessary.

We want to fill this gap. We are currently working on a solution through the Unusual Solvers Grant competition; we’re calling this project EDUCATE (Ethical Drone Use through Community Awareness and Tactical Engagement). Our Theory of Change targets major donors, investors and other funding agencies to convince them of the need to have an ethical framework for any project involving drones. We can use their buy-in as leverage to inculcate ethical frameworks in the various work flows of drone manufacture and use.

We intend to create engagement material to use at various levels of the drone industry that ensure that ethical considerations are incorporated in the processes of drone hardware and software manufacturing, as well as in the implementation of drone projects. This material will be aimed at facilitating an understanding of ethical frameworks, equipping teams with tools to draft best practice guidelines within their specific context. While we will create the process for drafting such a framework, the actual guidelines for implementation will be collaboratively drafted with the communities potentially impacted by the drone project.

To crystallize our Theory of Change, we have been undertaking three kinds of activities. Firstly, we spoke with members of a rural community who have been impacted by drone use. In their area, drones have been deployed without their consultation, and been used to create an atmosphere of fear. They did not feel legal recourse was a realistic option for them and they adapted their behaviour in response to drone deployment in the area. Their experiences helped us understand the ground level realities of the use of drones, validating the need for ethical frameworks. Secondly, we conducted interviews with relevant stakeholders and field experts. Through this process, we attempted to obtain insight into the workings of the drone industry, and made sense of the various points at which we could engage with it. Finally, we’ve conducted an extensive review of relevant literature to better understand the previous work done in this field.

( At the time of writing this blogpost, we were still in the process of conducting our field visits and our interviews. The rest of this post will focus on our review of the literature. -Editor)

Over the course of our literature review, some of the topics we’ve studied are:

• Ethical frameworks for other emergent technologies

• Uses and concerns of using drones in conservation and development projects

• Tools to gauge public perception, especially around new technologies

• Governance Theories around making ethical frameworks effective

• Post-normal Science

• Democratization of science

While the reading material has been varied and dense, this process has been extremely helpful for our project, and has also been personally gratifying.  Looking at the intersecting disciplines and theories that may be applicable to this project has been an exciting process for me.  While we are yet to create our engagement material itself, we have a sense of the shape of the process we wish to create. Many ethical frameworks for emergent technologies already exist. We do not want to create another one.  Instead, we would like to make existing frameworks more implementable by cohesively presenting them in formats that those implementing projects can use in their work.

As a theoretical backbone, we are using Technologies of Humility (Jasanoff, 2005) to help assess and manage emergent technologies with many unknowns. The framework outlined here for the ethical evaluation of new technologies highlights four pillars:

• Framing

• Vulnerability

• Distribution

• Learning

In addition to this, we are also imbibing her recommendation to make work more applicable by moving beyond academic peer review to include inputs from relevant stakeholders.

We’re certain that we want to incorporate reflexivity within the process we’re outlining; i.e. the creation of structured pathways to incorporate checks that allow for adaptation over the course of a project. This is especially important when working with emerging technologies such as drones, both for the community whose understanding and perception of the technology may shift as the project progresses, as well as for those implementing the project, giving them the flexibility required to make their project successful.

A large component of our work will also be to effectively engage communities in the process of drafting and overseeing the implementation of the drone projects they may be impacted by. As per our research, informed consent alone seems inadequate (Van de Poel, 2016) as a tool for making ethical guidelines inclusive. As part of our project, we will evaluate other methodologies of engagement, such as deliberative polling (Ahmad et. Al 2006). We will compare and contrast these, as well as various other methods and tools for community engagement and will be developing communication material accordingly.

Finally, we intend for accountability to be built into the framework and implementation of drone use. Testing the principles of the democratisation of science, we want to establish the pathways by which communities impacted by drones will be able to hold implementers and funders accountable for their actions and investments respectively. One example or possible manifestation of this could be contractual, where the project contract could include a clause stating that the power to renew the contract or permission to implement different phases of a project was with the impacted community.

We’ll be at the WeRobotics Unusual Solutions Pitch event in Nairobi, Kenya, next week where we’ll be competing with the other eight finalists for a grant to make our solution a reality! More on this once the event’s done; for more information, follow us on Twitter/Instagram or reach out to us via the contact form on our website.

Report: The Role of Technology in Conservation in India | SCCS-Bangalore 2019

On the 16th October 2019, Technology for Wildlife (TfW) organised a panel discussion on the ‘Role of Technology in Conservation” at the Student Conference on Conservation Science, Bengaluru. The format of the panel discussion was 15-20 minute presentations by each panelist, followed by a few questions from the audience for that panelist; once all the panelists spoke, there was time for questions at the end.

The panelists were Prithvi from Appiko, Abhi from Wildly, Jose from the Wildlife Trust of India, and Shashank from TfW. Unfortunately, this had to be an all-male panel; though we had invited four women working in this space to participate, none of them were able to make it.

The panel began with Prithvi from Appiko, who walked us through the range of Appiko’s products, with an emphasis on their sensors that allow regular cameras to be used as camera traps. I found their explanation to why they had chosen to build camera traps interesting since there are already off-the-shelf camera traps available. In Prithvi’s opinion, even camera traps used for tiger estimation, which are perhaps one of the most abundantly used technological devices in Indian conservation, were origninally developed to optimize hunting and are not always conducive for wildlife surveys. This is indicative of the current relationship between technology and conservation even for a well-funded issue such as tiger conservation, where there is limited funding for innovation; technological needs are met through ‘jugaad’ of existing technologies meant for other applications. My favourite take-away from Prithvi’s presentation was his outlook on the role of technology in conservation: “Technology is just a tool for conservation, but with the right tool, you can do a lot more.” 

Prithvi from Appiko

Abhi from Wildly

Jose from the Wildlife Trust of India

The next speaker, Abhi from Wildly, was also focused on developing hardware for conservation. Their company is currently building acoustic devices to detect illegal activities in protected areas. Later in the conference, I had a chance to listen to them demonstrate their work during another workshop on Machine and Deep Learning, and it was really interesting to learn what applying these techniques in the current Indian conservation context entails. My most valuable take away from Abhi’s presentations was that their technology was created and developed out of a current conservation need. This, coupled with the fact that they are trying to be open-source and affordable makes them a very interesting organisation, who’s work we will be following.

The third presentation, by Jose from the Wildlife Trust of India, was on his work with Wildlife Crime Prevention. It was a very engaging talk and differed from the others in that he focused on the sustainability of technology more than on sustainable technology. He discussed various technological interventions that have been developed for his work, such as HAWK, and on how his team’s vision and working relationship proved to be more important in ensuring effective technological interventions more than the nature of the technologies themselves.

The final presentation was by Shashank from TfW. Multiple people communicated that they enjoyed his talk and that his enthusiasm was communicated in the presentation. It was the only non-hardware technology business in the group and I think his presentation on our work communicated the varied uses of technology in conservation.

Overall, the panel was interesting and unique. In future iterations of this panel, it may also be useful to invite panelists working in areas related to conservation ecology, such as mainstream ecologists or technologists working outside of conservation. This would help add different perspectives and provide an understanding of the larger picture.

Perceptions of Ladakh (Ladakh Lakes #3)

Ladakh. For someone as besotted with the mountains as I am, the name has always stirred something in my soul. Images and sounds of extraterrestrial landscapes, extremophilic biodiversity and a culture shrouded in yak-skin mystique have gnawed at my imagination for years, urging me to venture forth. Something kept holding me back. Thanks to Technology for Wildlife and Shashank, my long spell of indolence paid off and I was able to experience the trans-Himalaya in a special way – not only for the relatively remoter regions we were able to access (owing to some expedition-level planning and permission-seeking by TfW), but also for the work we ultimately set out to do. You have (or will) read enough about the work conducted during the expedition from the keyboards of more qualified persons here on this blog. This post is about the mountains, and time in the mountains is valuable – so let’s get right to it.

The author exploring another part of the Himalayas in October 2017. Photo: Shashank Srinivasan | 2017

I have been exploring the Himalaya (mostly on foot, and in limited pockets) for the last four to five years now. I recently obtained my Basic Mountaineering certification from the National Institute for Mountaineering and Allied Sports, at Dirang (in West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh). Being as it is under the Ministry of Defence, the Institute also caters to defence personnel who are required, or are looking, to gain competence in mountaineering (whether for warfare, or for participation in armed forces peak-climbing expeditions). Only a fraction of the month-long course is conducted at the Institute itself, and the rest in various stations in Tawang district, right up till the final station at the base of the Meerathang glacier (at about 4600 metres ASL). Most of these areas are not accessible to civilians, and I – along with the rest of my course mates - was fortunate enough to see some truly pristine parts of the Eastern Himalaya, with appropriately breathtaking biodiversity to match the stage.  This region of India is culturally contiguous with southern Tibet, of which Ladakh forms the western frontier. I was almost trembling with anticipation at this - to be travelling to the other end of the Himalayas, mere months after my 28-day boot camp in its eastern reaches.

The road connecting Kinnaur to Spiti. Photograph: Shashank Srinivasan | 2019

We began our journey in Kalka, travelled through Narkanda (in Shimla district), Rampur Bushahr (the gateway to Kinnaur), stopping at Nako (Kinnaur), Dhankar, Kaza (in Spiti) and then via Keylong towards the settlement at Thukje (at Tso-Kar) before proceeding to the other sites on our itinerary. Over about 7 days, and thanks to our first terrific driver Lucky (from Kullu), we negotiated roads (of varying descriptions, but I’ll call them all roads for the sake of convenience) through the foothills, lesser Himalayas and Greater Himalayas before crossing over into the trans-Himalayan region - Kinnaur and Spiti (literally the ‘in-between land’) - and ultimately entering the dramatic cold desert region that is Ladakh.

The changing landscape was very different to the road trip from Gauhati to Dirang, which starts at the floodplains of the Brahmaputra, crosses the lush foothills of the Eastern Himalaya and takes one to the gateway of the higher reaches, towards the McMahon Line and the famous Bailey Trail along the Arunachal Pradesh-Tibet border. For one, the lush forests at the lower latitudes of the Arunachal Pradesh Himalaya are ubiquitous even as high as 3500 metres above sea level. As we move northwards and westwards, the tree line gets lower and lower and vegetation in Ladakh (which is at an average elevation of 3200-3700 metres ASL) is very different – there are poplars and willows but mostly plantations in irrigated areas, or in the lower reaches of the valleys. Other than that, there are bushes typical of desert areas, shrubs and grasses. The land itself is more undulating than mountainous, and the vistas sprawl wider than is possible to see in the Himalaya proper. The cultural contiguities with Arunachal were surprising, though – given the three thousand or so kilometres of mountains, plains and valleys that separate these two regions. The ethnic identities of their peoples as Tibetans is still preserved – in the common traditions of their robes (minor variations of the Tibetan Chuba), their lifestyles (both the Changpa of Ladakh and the Monpa of Tawang are pastoral tribes, chiefly herding goats and yaks), and their faith (Tibetan Buddhism is still the dominantly ‘visible’ religion in both places, and predates Islam and Christianity in Ladakh). Even their wildlife is shared - marmots chatter at the higher reaches of the Arunachal Himalaya, and can be found urgently waddling their way throughout most of Ladakh as well. The black-necked crane (thung thung to the locals of Ladakh) breeds in the wetlands of Ladakh and flies down to Bhutan and Tawang for the winter. It is revered as sacred by the Changpas and the Monpas alike.

The black-necked crane (Grus nigricollis), revered in both Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Photo: Shashank Srinivasan | 2017

As the likenesses strike, so do the contrasts. The visual dominance of Tibetan Buddhism over the Ladakh landscape thinly veils the cultural eclecticism of a land that lay at the crossroads of important trade routes, from the Far East to Central and Western Asia. The influence of multiple ethnicities – Uighur, Balti, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Tibetan – is amply visible in Leh, especially in the establishments and homes near the Main Bazaar and old city.  The limited availability of wood in Ladakh is evinced in the mud houses that dominate the rural landscapes (Leh has become increasingly concretised), in contrast to the stone-and-wood houses of Arunachal (more common in the Himalaya and sub-Himalaya). Wood is used in Ladakh, though sparingly, and is more commonly seen in the houses of the affluent, in gömpas (religious buildings), choskhors (religious enclaves) and the palaces. The dominance of tourism as a sector of the economy in Ladakh also struck me; the careful curation of its cultural features for the foreign eye – opening up, so to speak, while trying simultaneously to hold on its identity. We were told by the founder of our travel agency, Jigmet, that local hospitality operators blacklist or even penalize anyone with a MakeMyTrip sticker – an old value of the Ladakhi people and a lesson that has been reinforced from other Indian towns that have become tourist spots at the cost of the local economy and culture, such as Manali. In contrast, the more difficult terrain and remoteness of Western Arunachal have engendered a more culturally homogenous population, as well as a much lower influx of tourists. Their problems are different – of infrastructure, of connectivity, of integration with the rest of the economy.  Their ecology and its associated services are threatened, just not as visibly as in the extremes of Ladakh where the lack of water and the changing precipitation patterns are far more perceptible as effects of anthropogenic climate change.  

Hopefully, the work our team has started will go some way in bolstering the conservation efforts already underway in Ladakh (and eventually, other high-altitude regions as well), and ensure these fascinating landscapes survive as more than just stories.

The author removing litter from a high-altitude lake in Ladakh. Photo: Shashank Srinivasan | 2019