Web3 for Wildlife Conservation
Part 1
On Friday, November 18th, 2022, Polygon Technology's Social Impact arm,Impact Plus hosted a workshop on Web3 for Wildlife Conservation at Strathmore University in Kenya. During the past four decades, Kenya had lost nearly 70% of its wildlife and was home to nearly 140 endangered or threatened species.
The workshop aimed to explore the various applications of blockchain technology, such as smart contracts and NFTs, for use in wildlife conservation. The event promised a vibrant afternoon of learning about innovative ways blockchain was being leveraged for wildlife conservation.
The event started at 3:00 p.m. and lasted until 6:00 p.m. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from several brilliant speakers. Dr. Irene Amoke spoke about the importance of wildlife conservation and the remarkable work being done by Kenya Wildlife Trust. Joni Bloch discussed how TUMA was utilizing blockchain and NFTs to provide essential finance for wildlife conservation projects in Africa. Hakeem Disu shared insights on how crypto adoption could bring transparency to broken systems and ensure fair compensation to communities, promoting peaceful coexistence between humans and wildlife. Bradley Azegele presented innovative Web3 use-cases in wildlife conservation, drawing from his participation in a hackathon hosted by Sovereign Nature Initiative.
Many thanks to Eng. Dr. Julius Butime for hosting the workshop at Strathmore University. For any inquiries, participants were advised to contact Melisa Akumu.
The organizers were excited about the opportunity to connect with attendees and looked forward to the event.
Part 2
The Part 2 was held at Maasai Mara University on 24 February 2023.
Presentations kicked off with Lorena Mathendu of Binance, giving an explanation of the fundamentals of blockchain and interpretation of a number of WEB3 terminologies.
Sharon Murugi of Kamusi DAO followed with the opportunities in Web3 and an introduction to the Kamusi ya WEB3, which is a project focused on interpretation of WEB3 related terms into local dialects such as Kiswahili.
Kasaine Sankan presented some of the activities that Kenya Wildlife Trust is undertaking to aid in wildlife conservation such as community workshops, human wildlife conflict data collection and analysis and hackathons and their [Tracing the Wild project]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpELeWS4MIc) in conjunction with Nairobi Design (Week) and Sovereign Nature Initiative.
Joni Bloch of TUMA Conservation followed with an exposition on how NFTs are being used to create transparency in donation proceeds to Mbulia Conservancy and their new coral reef rehabilitation and tokenization project in conjunction with Oceans Alive Trust .
Bradley Azegele of BLCK IoT concluded by presenting their winning hackathon solution that tackles Human Wildlife Conflict mitigation through an alert system and geofences that uses Helium.
Presentations made can be found here.