Applications Invited for the Wild Incubator Tech Program

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About the Organization

The Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS) is an internationally recognized centre-of-excellence in the areas of wildlife research, conservation, policy, and education. Our mission is to safeguard and conserve India’s rich and diverse wildlife heritage through cutting-edge research, effective conservation strategies, and community engagement. For forty years, we have been committed to advancing scientific knowledge, promoting sustainable practices, and inspiring a collective sense of stewardship to ensure the survival of India’s wildlife and their habitats for future generations. Our vision is of a society that values and protects its natural heritage, fostering a sustainable environment where wildlife thrives and human well-being is interconnected with the health of the natural world. Through our research, conservation efforts, and community empowerment, we aspire to create a future where wildlife and humans can coexist, ensuring the perpetuity of India’s extraordinary natural wildlife heritage.

About the Fellowship

India’s unique biodiversity faces specific conservation challenges, necessitating the development of innovative, technology-driven solutions tailored to its distinct environmental and socio-economic contexts. There is a history of usage of technology for the conservation of biodiversity in India by leading scientists and organizations, however, most of the technologies have been imported and these technologies were not created with Indian Wildlife Protected Areas in mind.

The Wildlife Tech Incubator aims to foster India-specific innovations in wildlife conservation. This initiative will concentrate on three core areas: fostering innovation tailored to Indian ecosystems, providing a platform for the creation, testing, and scaling of effective conservation technologies, and building the necessary infrastructure to support and amplify homegrown solutions.

Through Wild Incubator Tech Program we will be providing a small grant to NGOs working on innovative technologies focussed on addressing current wildlife science and conservation challenges. The broad technologies can be IOT, AI, Open Data, Satellite Imaging, GIS and Remote Sensing etc.

Why is it important:

India’s wildlife conservation landscape is currently facing two significant issues.

First, there is a lack of technology-driven solutions that are specifically tailored to the unique challenges of India’s diverse ecosystems. The country’s rich biodiversity, spanning from the dense forests of the Western Ghats, to the arid landscapes of the Thar Desert and mountain regions of Ladakh, presents a wide array of conservation challenges. These challenges require specialized technological interventions that are not just effective but also contextually relevant. Moreover, the multitude of challenges like wildlife poaching and trade, human-wildlife conflict, connectivity being severed and the growing intensity of forest fires need innovative and deployable technology solutions.

Second and more important, there is a notable gap in the scalability of pilot projects. Numerous innovative ideas, hackathons and pilot projects in wildlife technology emerge, but they often struggle to progress beyond the initial stages. This lack of scalability limits their potential impact, leaving many promising technologies underutilized and unable to contribute significantly to conservation efforts.

The Wildlife Incubator Tech is designed to address this gap of Indian innovation and the scalability of solutions. By focusing on the development of India-specific technological solutions, the incubator will foster innovations that are directly aligned with the unique conservation needs of India’s diverse habitats.

Eligibility

• Must be a registered non-profit organization based in India.
• Must have 12A and 80G Registrations.
• The project cannot be an academic research project (for example master’s or doctoral research).
• Cannot be an individual research project.
• The focus area of tech solutions:
• Human-wildlife interactions
• Combat wildlife trade and illegal hunting
• Land use change and Mapping
• Conservation of Species (Endangered Species in Focus)
• The solution should at least be in a prototype stage. Only ideas will not be considered.
• The organization should have capacity internally or through a partner to deploy the project.
• The solution should be scalable in terms of easy adoption by the intended audience.
• The solution should contribute to public good in terms of accessibility to other organizations to be able to adapt and use.

How to Apply

Application Deadline: 30th September 2024.

Click to Apply

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Tags Environment and Sustainability Innovations and Technology Others