'Rhino Coin': Can a Cryptocurrency Help Save Africa's Rhinoceroses?

Differing laws, policing, and management across borders has made it difficult to combat the huge industry that is Wildlife Crime, but a new approach in Canada is showing the way for some common ground. By collaborating with local sellers, a micro-chip can be attached to pelts to track their movement and discern whether the pelt is being sold illegally or not -- even across borders.

An economic shift to renewable energy could take decades, but thanks to rapidly evolving disruptive technologies, dropping prices of solar and wind power sources, and increasing market demand for green business, the new age of renewable energy could encompass the world economy much more quickly.

Ten years ago, Vodafone's Safaricom launched "M-Pesa" a mobile-phone based payment system designed to ease transfer of money in Kenya among individuals and small businesses. With a maximum transaction of 70,000 Kenyan shillings ($675 USD), M-Pesa markets "to the base of the pyramid:" not only has M-Pesa taken root in more than ten other countries, but it counts 18 million active users in Kenya and, through access to a mobile monetary payment system, has lifted 2% of Kenyan households out of extreme poverty.

The United States can outsource certain kinds of "microwork," such as accurately digitizing large swaths of information, to developing countries without taking jobs from Americans ― if it’s done carefully, and ethically, as some organizations are working to do. As the author Robert Wright has argued, we no longer live in a zero-sum world, where one person’s, or one country’s gain, must be another’s loss.

As farmland is converted to space for solar panels, researchers are planting native wildflowers amongst the technology to support populations of bees and other insects facing endangerment. While it's not the only solution needed to reverse the decline of pollinating species, as seen in the past decade, planting them in solar sites are a useful start.

The illegal wildlife trade is consistently a big problem across Africa. To help tackle the issue of poachers, a company called Retarius uses counter-terrorist operations experience by training and mentoring locals involved in the prevention fight. The program is still growing and takes place in Malawi, Cameroon, Benin, and Zambia. In Malawi specifically, the training has resulted in 114 arrests made and 1000 kgs of ivory seized in 2018.

In northeastern Papua New Guinea, community leaders and the government set aside 360,000 hectares of the Managalas Plateau as a protected conservation area in 2017. The project has strong local support. But facing destructive resource extraction and land use, conservation's longevity hangs on whether the community can create markets for sustainable agriculture, as well as workable infrastructure.

In Tanzania, low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) are a form of telecommunications technology that have the power to potentially stop poachers in their tracks when coupled with geolocation sensors. The application doesn't stop there, however, as others throughout the world are finding other proactive uses for this wireless technology advancement.

New Zealand has an ambitious initiative in place to eradicate millions of evasive species by 2050, but that doesn't mean researchers have halted short-term actions to stabilized species and avoid extinction. The kakapo, a parrot-type of bird, is a prime example. While efforts have been taken for over a century to save the bird, most recently researchers have succeeded in not only moving the kakapos to three predator-free islands around the country, but also in aiding breeding efforts by monitoring the growth of chicks.

Grassroots organizations, Empowered by Light and Empower Generation, are killing two birds with one stone: bringing clean energy to rural Nepal, and creating jobs for Nepalese women in the environmental sector. By helping to install electricity-generating solar panels, which simultaneously prevents illegal animal poaching, women are provided not only with a stable income and a ladder to reliable economic growth, but also with a rich work-life balance, allowing them to become “clean energy entrepreneurs” while continuing to care for their families and tend to their village’s needs.