5.3 Environment and Energy Mobile technologies are being used to educate and keep citizens and vulnerable stakeholders abreast of environmental and energy-related issues including weather patterns, climate change and responsible environmental stewardship. For instance, Weather Info for All collects and distributes critical weather information to people most affected by climate change throughout the African continent. The project aims to provide rapid and accurate climate information to vulnerable farmers, fishermen, and marginalized communities. Two other similar projects, DatAgro in Latin America and Avaaj Otalo in India enable agricultural workers to gather local climate information via mobile devices which is then redistributed to other farmers to help them in crop planning and food security (Patel et al. 2010). Mobile phones can be used to help manage scarce natural resources, such as in Egypt, where the Blue Line mobile application helps farmers in the Nile Delta to manage limited water resources more efficiently. With text messages and hotlines, the government’s water management experts can communicate with the Delta farmers on water supplies and allocation, enabling farmers to practice more sustainable irrigation.30 Mobile phones can also help raise public awareness of environmental issues, such as rainforest destruction, desertification and water management and, significantly, can help mobilize citizens to lobby for environmental protection. Greenpeace Argentina, for example, used mobile phone advocacy tools to lobby for the passage of the country’s Forest Law by collecting petition signatures via text messages (Gulezian 2009).31 Moreover, SMS-based tools can be used to help citizens make ecologically responsible and ethical decisions about consumption. For instance, the South African-based mobile application FishMS allows people to query the origins and environmental implications of different seafood selections via SMS. One of the most useful applications of mobile phones in environmental management is in enabling more thorough environmental data collection. With mobile sensing applications, sensory devices can be attached to mobile phones to track multiple data points and collect dynamic information about environmental trends like air pollution quality. In Ghana, for example, mobile sensing was used to collect data on air pollution using a carbon monoxide sensor and global positioning system (GPS). Participants tracked air quality during their everyday routine, and the data led to the creation of heat maps of air pollution across Accra (Kinkade and Verclas 2008).32 BOX 8: Rural Electricity Through SharedSolar With small-scale solar micro-grids and an SMS-based crediting system, SharedSolar — a research project at Columbia University in the United States — is linking poor people with more affordable sources of energy. ‘Micro-grids’ piloted by SharedSolar connect people to localized power sources, such as solar power, which are activated and credited using SMS. Up to 20 consumers in a 50 to 100m radius — from individual households to schools and small business — can be connected to these grids. The pre-paid metering gives rural households the chance to buy smaller units of electricity, and the remote, SMS-based crediting saves billing, collection, and management costs.33 SharedSolar first piloted the project in Mali in 2010 and is currently establishing another 24 systems across Mali, Tanzania and Uganda.34
Mobile Technologies and Empowerment
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