On the other side: drones as empowering tools, by 2050+
Still from Frédérick A. Belzile, Eyes in the Sky (2017).
Jake, the character interpreted by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, is a private investigator working on a case about the L.A. chief engineer of the city’s water department: gallons of water are being sluiced from reservoirs at night, in the middle of a drought. In one of the most remarkable scenes, the culprit is seen right after climbing a fence by two security guards, one of whom (Roman Polansky himself in a cameo) whips out a flick knife and sticks it up Nicholson’s nostril. "You're a very nosy fellow”, says Polansky (1).
The movie was released in 1974, at a time when environmental consciousness had been seeded in people’s minds by figures such as the iconic marine biologist Rachel Carson, together with many other scientists, humanists, social scientists, educators and grassroots activists.
By the 1970s, thanks to those pioneering and enlightened individuals, awareness of the effects of anthropogenic activities and demands for change were a top social priority. Yet, environmental activism involved high risks and costs, too.
Today, Jake could have saved his nose by simply using a tool that, thanks to its commercial availability and low price, has become an essential instrument for activists and militants of every kind: the drone. With a few hundred bucks and a smartphone app, we can easily maneuver the small device – something in between a third eye and an extension of our body – that is capable of going round fences and physical obstacles. From up there, when in flight, it is possible to record, survey and eventually publicly share any kind of image or video documenting a transgression, without being exposed to direct physical hazards, and in the blink of an eye.
Far off from the worrisome exploitation of drones by police forces and the army – from systemic surveillance to downright ground-attack missions – informal usage of drones at the hand of activists, artists and ordinary citizens has proliferated in the past years.
Beyond leisure, low-cost quadcopters have found a useful niche in both environmental and humanitarian activism: from metropolises to remote villages, racialized and endangered communities now have the ability to use aerial advantage as a tool of empowerment and resistance.
An aerial view of Oceti Sakowin, the largest #NoDAPL encampment in North Dakota. Photo: Oceti Sakowin Camp.
In recent years, the old fight against deforestation taking place in the Panamanian rainforest has undergone radical changes, both in terms of methods of control and elusion thereof.
From 2015, indigenous Wounaan tribes have gathered in villages in the Chiman district to learn how to identify and map the illegal destruction of forests in their native land, which happens to be one among the most biodiverse rainforests on the planet. Until recently, this was home to thousands of coveted and protected rosewood trees, also known as oro verde, or green gold, due to their exorbitant prices on the Chinese market. Today, rosewoods have mostly disappeared, as are huge patches of forest burned down by ranchers and settlers.(2)
Protected by the foliage of this green paradise, with the support of local engineers like Carlos Gomez or Eliseo Quintero, Wounaan people are grappling with tasks that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: they engage with technologies such as smartphones and laptops, learn how to pilot drones, and understand the meaning of GPS tracking. The data generated all year round by the flights are used to monitor the boundaries of their land; to signal the presence of poachers, loggers and other squatters; to backup with indisputable visual materials their legal fight; to demarcate the land they claim; and to show how they are protecting it.
Territorial claim and ecosystem safeguard were at the core of another remarkable community, this time of a heterogeneous and temporary nature.In April 2016, a group of Indian native and non-native activists started a year-long protest to push against the construction of a Pipeline in North Dakota crossing beneath Missouri River, which with its presence would have violated Lakota’s sacred sites and threatened the region’s water supply. The long-term presence of the thousands of protesters on site resulted in a small DIY town builts on the plains, consisting mostly of tents and teepees. “Above these camps, there was near constant noise — circling unmarked planes, police helicopters, and other signs of surveillance by Morton County and the federal government. But there was also a small distinctive hum that came to be associated with resistance: the buzz of photographic drones.” (3)
The so-called Drone Warriors used drones to document human rights and constitutional violations, and this incredible aerial footage was shared daily on social media to give real-time updates to the hundreds of thousands of people that were following the protest vicariously – and to encourage them to join the fight. Videos and photographs of the endangered site proved to be a powerful tool to convey the essence of the struggle – the necessity to take direct action to prevent the destruction of a delicate and unique ecosystem – and soon went viral under the slogan #NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline). Protesters succeeded in capturing the attention of users across the globe, enhancing the scope and the symbolic value of their militant action. Sadly, in spite of nearly 15,000 people staging the sit-in, the pipeline was completed and became operational in June 2017 (4).But the broad deployment of new technologies combined with constant dissemination of footage via social media has surely helped to step up the fight for Climate Justice.
Abel Rodriguez, Ciclo anual en las altas terrazas de la selva tropical (2007). Courtesy Abel Rodriguez and Tropenbos International Colombia.
The joint participation of diverse agents – whether individuals or or. by ganizations, humans or other-than-humans –proves to be essential for the fight to protect natural resources, generating unprecedented alliances, and a curious stratification of knowledge geared towards ecosystems’ safeguard. On one side, Indigenous intelligence is cumulative, long-term, local and spiritual; while on the other photogrammetry, GPS tracking and unmanned vehicles are byproducts of globalised technologies that employ opaque extractive techniques: data gathering, planned obsolescence, high energy and material demand. “Indigenous peoples are using the globalization of communication in order to combat the globalization of consumption.” (5)
The very same extractive technologies – held by governments and big tech companies – that are disrupting social and environmental systems and power relations in Western democracies have been providing the possibility for action to those on the other side.
Cases like the ones mentioned above, similar to many others that have happened all over the world, epitomize an important lesson that has emerged in the past 6 or 7 years: that deeply understanding a technology and systemically questioning its established purposes can unleash unprecedented empowering forces, often embedded but deprecated.
Carlos Gomez, Panama project coordinator for the Rainforest Foundation. Photo by Kristen French.
Text by:
Mattia Inselvini
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli
2050+ is a Milan-based interdisciplinary agency working at the intersection of technology, environment and politics.
[1] Movie Quotes youtube channel, Chinatown 1974 - You're a very nosy fellow, kitty cat.
[2] Kristen French, New weapons for Panama tribes in old fight to save forests, Al Jazeera America, February 25, 2016.
[3] Adrienne Keene, Gregory Hitch, Drone Warriors: The Art of Surveillance and Resistance at Standing Rock, edgeeffects.net, November 7, 2019 - updated November 21,2019.
[4] Dakota Access Pipeline protests, wikipedia.org, accessed september 3, 2020.
[5] Lecture by Erica-Irene Daes, The impact of globalization on Indigenous Intellectual Property and Cultures, Museum of Sydney, Australia, 25 May 2004.