Supporting Indigenous sustainability solutions

The Amazon rainforest plays a vital role in sustaining life on Earth. Estimates suggest its rich biodiversity stores the equivalent of 10 years of global fossil fuel emissions. But deforestation, illegal mining and climate change threaten its existence and the lives of the 30 million people who call it home. OU researchers are supporting Indigenous communities fighting these sustainability challenges.

Dr Alessandra Marino, OU Research Fellow (International Development and Inclusive Innovation) and Dr Andrea Berardi (Senior Lecturer in Environmental Systems) are collaborating with Guyana’s Indigenous Macushi people and mission-driven technology start-up, Waterware Collective, to combat environmental harm.

The Surface Water Integrated Monitoring (SWIM) project is supported by the OU’s Open Societal Challenges programme. It enables the community to remotely monitor water quality in the vast southwestern Rupununi region they call home, using sustainable, low-cost and locally designed technologies.

“The Rupununi River and surrounding wetlands are the Indigenous Macushi people’s lifeblood, providing food, drinking water and sustaining the forests used for farming, hunting and materials. The area’s beauty and biodiversity have also made it an ecotourism mecca. Its rich natural resources also make it the target of illegal fishing, gold mining and logging operations,” Dr Berardi explains. “This unsustainable development and environmental exploitation threatens the community’s way of life, bringing pollution, lawlessness, violence and disease.”

SWIM blends Indigenous knowledge and crafting expertise with the latest technology to create unique community-built sensors, drones and water robots. “Together, we’ve built an underwater monitoring unit, named ‘Fish’, using natural latex from the native Balata tree and ‘Logo Logo’, built from bamboo and palm leaves, which collects vital data from the water’s surface,” Dr Berardi explains. “Each costs less than £100 to build, and the communities can maintain and manage them themselves.”

The project builds on more than 20 years of OU collaboration with the Indigenous Macushi people, which began in 2000 when the community asked Dr Berardi and research colleagues for help to find a solution to monitor water quality. Together, they went on to establish the Cobra Collective. The social enterprise brings together European and Indigenous researchers to support communities facing challenges worldwide.“

During the past two decades, Macushi researchers have become community leaders able to blend traditional and scientific knowledge, who engage with development projects and push back on those that could harm the environment. In 2018, for example, they helped to successfully challenge a planned US$7 million agricultural development project that would have devastated the region, destroying wetlands, stopping fish from spawning and polluting the vital water supply.

Dr Berardi says projects such as these can also positively impact Indigenous communities’ sustainability. “Creating new employment opportunities reduces the need for young people to leave to find work. Meanwhile, enhancing environmental monitoring capabilities also enable communities to measure the impact of development initiatives, which is essential to secure additional investment in education, healthcare, infrastructure and transportation while limiting the damaging impacts of these developments.”

The project runs until the end of July 2024.