People in rural Africa face social, economic and political challenges in sustaining their livelihoods. But also the natural environments on which they depend are under pressure. Global environmental change increases the spatial and temporal variability and sensitivity of many natural processes affecting biodiversity, health, agriculture and water systems. Timely information on relevant environmental dynamics (such as water levels, spread of plant pests or prevalence of disease-carrying insects) is often lacking because of limited understanding of local system dynamics. This in turn reinforces collective action problems, i.e., collaboration deficits due to relatively high individual costs of contribution to common goods with marginal or uncertain individual benefits.
Recent developments in web-based and mobile technologies hold considerable promise to overcome these problems. They allow linking science-based models of dynamic natural processes with participatory monitoring and broad information accessibility. ICT-based virtual platforms enable and encourage users to share relevant environmental information such as the observation of infected crops, rainfall and water availability or a malaria-mosquito densities.
People in rural Africa face social, economic and political challenges in sustaining their livelihoods. But also the natural environments on which they depend are under pressure. Global environmental change increases the spatial and temporal variability and sensitivity of many natural processes affecting biodiversity, health, agriculture and water systems. Timely information on relevant environmental dynamics (such as water levels, spread of plant pests or prevalence of disease-carrying insects) is often lacking because of limited understanding of local system dynamics. This in turn reinforces collective action problems, i.e., collaboration deficits due to relatively high individual costs of contribution to common goods with marginal or uncertain individual benefits.
Recent developments in web-based and mobile technologies hold considerable promise to overcome these problems. They allow linking science-based models of dynamic natural processes with participatory monitoring and broad information accessibility. ICT-based virtual platforms enable and encourage users to share relevant environmental information such as the observation of infected crops, rainfall and water availability or a malaria-mosquito densities.
The EVOCA programme aims to boost and study the development of Environmental Virtual Observatories for Connective Action (EVOCAs) in West and East Africa. This entails the development of participatory monitoring systems, virtual platforms and digital applications, whereby both the development process and the resulting EVOCAs are geared towards evoking connective action in five cases: