What Are Innovative Technologies, and Why Should Conservationists Care?
Conservation organisations rely on tools like drones, satellites, and remote camera traps to gather data and monitor ecosystems. These technologies have transformed conservation, but new challenges like transparency, funding gaps, and community engagement remain.
Innovative technologies, including blockchain, IoT, gamification, digital certificates, and DApps, can help tackle these issues. However, adopting these tools can be daunting, especially when questions like โIs this the right solution for us?โ or โHow do we overcome the barriers?โ arise.
What is Web 3.0?
Web 3.0 is the next phase of the internet, focused on decentralisation, data ownership, and transparency. These principles provide opportunities to scale conservation efforts, build trust, and engage local and global communities, but they also require planning and readiness to adopt successfully.
Our Navigating Web 3.0 Guide breaks down the key benefits, challenges, and practical steps for integrating these tools into your work, helping you explore how they can amplify your impact.
๐ Download our guide here: www.lrcwildlifeconservation.com
๐ฌ If youโre already using Web 3.0 technologies in your conservation projects, Iโd love to hear your experiences, both positive and negative!
Is your organisation's technology decision-making as structured as it needs to be? Conservation organisations face real pressure to adopt technology, often without a clear process for assessing whether it fits their context, capacity, and conservation goals.
The free Conservation Technology Decision Quiz takes five minutes. It scores your approach across three areas: Decision Clarity, Fit and Feasibility, and Delivery and Performance. Results include practical recommendations matched to your score, so you can see where your decision process is strong and what to address first. Start here: Technology Decision Quiz
I work with conservation organisations and funders on structured technology decision-making, the process that determines whether adoption actually works. Twenty-five years in conservation across the Global South. Technology-agnostic, no vendor affiliations.
If your team is navigating a technology decision, evaluating a pilot, or funding organisations that are, I'd welcome a conversation.
BACKGROUND
Dr. Louisa Richmond-Coggan. My career spans field-based ecology, international NGO and policy work, academic leadership, and conservation technology decision-making.
Field career: large carnivore ecology and human-wildlife coexistence research across Eastern and Southern Africa, including as Head of Ecology at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. I led Namibia's National Leopard Census, a multi-stakeholder project whose results fed into national and international policy. I built the Carnivore Tracker app, the first of its kind in Namibia.
Institutional career: BirdLife International, UNEP-WCMC, TRAFFIC International, Earthwatch. Academic Dean at the School of Wildlife Conservation at the African Leadership University. Technology and innovation work with IUCN Tech4Nature, including leading three Innovation Challenge Workshops and contributing to the strategic guidance framework on conservation technology adoption.
The Navigating Web 3.0 Guide: A Tool for Conservation came out of that work. It is a decision-support tool that starts with your conservation goals and operational realities, not the technology. 34 guided questions assess which emerging technologies are worth exploring across four areas: data collection and management, resource allocation and financial management, collaboration and communication, and monitoring and evaluation. Now integrated into the IUCN GSAP SKILLS platform. This guide is where the decision-support work started, and it remains the clearest entry point into conservation technology decision-making for teams new to this field.
Research at the International Conservation Technology Conference, Lima in 2026 confirmed what I had been building toward: the gap in conservation technology is not the tools. It is the structured process for deciding whether, which, and how technology fits an organisation's context.
PhD, Nottingham Trent University. MSc Conservation Biology, Durrell Institute. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. IUCN WCPA Task Force on Human-Wildlife Coexistence. Member of the Nature Tech Collective and Top Tier Impact.
