It's hoped
Greenpeace will find solace in the Global Forest Watch project created this week by the
World Resources Institute. The project currently has 40 partners, although it seems Greenpeace and the
Forest Stewardship Council, mentioned in the first linked article here, have yet to sign up for the groundbreaking project.
The major funders of this project were the
Norwegian Climate and Forests Initiative, the
U.S. Agency for International Development,
UK Department for International Development,
Global Environment Facility and the
Tilia Fund.
The project utilizes
cloud computing services provided by the Google Earth project. Google mapping and new algorithms from the University of Maryland and it's hoped it will empower worldwide peoples to monitor deforestation and felling within their environments.
The Pater Surui people of Brazil are already using smartphones and GPS programs to monitor illegal logging in their neighborhood. And it's felt this technology will enable other groups to monitor illegal tree cutting within their environments. The Global Forest Watch project illustrates almost real time deforestation on a worldwide mapping basis, as illustrated in this
sister article from Digital Journal.
