Earth Day 2022 Special: Calling for Sustainable Fellows for “IoT Into the Wild Initiative” on April 29! Join Us for Wildlife and Environmental Conservation Efforts!

Dear community,

Hello everyone! How have you been nowadays? At Seeed, after launching the new ‘IoT Into the Wild’ products on March 25, we have been tirelessly working to launch “IoT Into the Wild Initiative” for Earth Day today. Considering the fact that the Earth Day is themed as “Invest in Our Planet” this year, “IoT Into the Wild Initiative” is an open source, community-driven, and global collaboration to support and bring scalable technology solutions into the wild. It is a multi-stakeholder community and platform for people who are dedicated to applying AIoT solutions for: i) wildlife conservation, ii) climate crisis, iii) carbon neutrality, and iv) environmental conservation projects (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Multi-Stakeholders as Fellows of “IoT Into the Wild Initiative”

So, about the brief history of Earth Day. Since 1970, Earth Day has been initiated by EARTHDAY.ORG, to awaken, reflect upon, diversify, raise awareness of, and stimulate actions for environmental protection and species conservation all around the world. In their words, “It’s [=Earth Day] not a day, it’s a movement. … we need to act (boldly), innovate (broadly), and implement (equitably). It’s going to take all of us. All in. Businesses, governments, and citizens — everyone accounted for, and everyone accountable. A partnership for the planet.” (EARTHDAY.ORG, n.d.).

I. Why “IoT Into the Wild Initiative”?

As our environmental habitats, endangered animals, and climate crisis are threatened by the costs of our own actions on this planet, it is all the more serious and necessary than ever before, for us to come together to undertake emergency actions for our real-world. As time progresses, IoT and AI have been increasingly receiving significant attention from multi-stakeholders as a ‘new toolset’ to obtain real-time and chronological data on every element we need from the wild and the environment. Why? For their accessibility, affordability, bottom-up innovation, resource efficiency, and sustainability features. It is now or never to transform wildlife and climate crisis monitoring landscapes for you, for me, and for all the existing beings in the entire Earth. By doing so, Seeed is keen on accelerating 4 SDGs with “IoT Into the Wild Initiative” fellows for Earth Day 2022 (Figure 2):

Figure 2. SDGs Close at the Heart of “IoT Into the Wild” Solutions (Image source: UN, n.d.)

II. What’s the Roadmap?

Through trans-sectoral collaborations, especially with technology companies, academia, NGOs, UN agencies, and local communities, we seek to invite a more diverse range of multi-stakeholders to join this Initiative to build a concerted ecosystem to foster, accelerate, and scale up sustainable technology solutions and projects in the wild (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Ecosystem of “IoT Into the Wild Initiative”

On this backdrop, Figure 4 demonstrates the Initiative’s roadmap in a succinct manner for this year.

Figure 4.  “IoT Into the Wild Initiative” Roadmap

III. How to Get Involved?

For the Earth Day 2022 special, we are organizing an online kick-off meeting with “IoT Into the Wild Initiative” Fellows on 29th of April. For this down-to-earth meeting, we hope to bring technologists, innovators, conservationists, environmentalists, policymakers, and other multi-stakeholders together to make a joint action plan, such as – what are the potential projects; where will the pilot projects are going to be happening; what are the standard criteria in selecting innovators, environmentalists, and conservationists to support; what other resources are needed to deploy AIoT in the wild; and who will contribute what resources. This kick-off meeting will be held on Discord. So far, we have joined our heads, hands, and hearts with people from Microsoft, Semtech, Hackster.io, and MakerBay Foundation, among others, to welcome you all.

Figure 5. Objectives for the Kick-off Meeting on April 29

If you are passionate about being part of the fellowship for this ambitious initiative, click to register your spot here for the online kick-off meeting on 29th of April. Upcoming open tech SDG rangers, we shall be looking forward to your proactive participation!!! 😀

So, what happens after your registration? Once everyone signs up, we will select a number of people to become Fellows, and send out an online meeting link via email. Exact time and time zone for the kick-off meeting on April 29 will be decided later by considering all the selected Fellows’ locations. That being said, please feel free to spread out the news about this meeting with your networks in NGOs, academia, UN agencies, and technology companies, so that as many interested people as possible can join this talk. 😉

To conclude, Seeed will continue to support all the multi-stakeholders’ bottom-up and open innovations for Earth Day, as we have been all these years. As Kathleen Rogers, the President of EARTHDAY.ORG quotes,

“By using Earth Day as a platform, we aim to push aside the barriers that have been erected … and redirect all of our attention to creating a 21st century economy that brings back the healing and health of our planet, protects all of our species, … and provides opportunities for everyone on the planet. … We need to act individually and together.” (EARTHDAYORG, 2022).