To avoid data colonisation and allow for genuine empowerment, people must control the data they generate.
Around the turn of the century, companies started realising the economic value of data. Google started monetizing it, tailoring ads based on search queries. Facebook did pretty much the same thing years later, in the context of social media.
What these companies were doing was essentially using data for commerce to understand a customer’s preferences and selling her just what she wanted (sometimes even if she didn’t know what that was). Between 2000 and 2010, data was used largely for this kind of monetization.
Over the past five years, the new thing has been the use of data in Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has been around as an idea for 40 years but the availability of data, a lot of it, changed its contours. The breakthrough was deep learning, which uses layers of neural networks to automate problem-solving.
Thanks to data, software and machines have become more intelligent.
Deep learning, combined with Big Data, is at the core of everything from image recognition to self-driving cars. AI has meant an even further increase in the value of data—it isn’t just about commerce now, but about automation and intelligence.
Data is the oil of the twenty-first century.
To look at how data can disrupt, one need look no further than the digital advertising business in the United States of America (US) and the payments business in China. In the US, Google and Facebook have a 71 per cent share of total digital advertising spending. In 2015-16, they captured 89 per cent of all incremental digital advertising.
China’s mobile payments are a staggering $5.5 trillion. The Chinese have done an amazing job of using QR codes for payments. These payments are dominated by two companies—Alipay, part of the Alibaba Group, and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat. These two companies own over 90 per cent of the payments market in China.
Interestingly, data combined with AI creates scale and speed.
Take Netflix in the US. Ten years back, Netflix was stuffing a DVD in a FedEx envelope and sending it to people. Today, it has over 100 million customers worldwide. It also has data on who is watching what, when, how, and what they like. It is using this data to help create better programming. When Netflix began, it was not in the content business but in the distribution business. It started with DVDs, and then video-streamed content it didn’t own. In 2013, it started creating its own content. Its first show was House Of Cards. This year, Netflix got 93 nominations at the Emmy awards. HBO, the grand old company of TV content, had 110.
That’s the power of data.
But where is this data coming from?
Out of 5.5 billion people in the world over the age of 14, 2.5 billion have a smartphone. By 2020, every person will have four personal digital devices. The Internet of Things will soon bring 50 billion devices online.
Smart companies have realised this. Apple, Google, GE, Siemens, Amazon, Tencent, Baidu—all are moving from products and pipes to platforms. These platforms enable products that solve problems, but they also capture and own data produced in the interaction. They also use the data produced to become better at what they do. That, in turn, attracts more customers, generating more data.
Data is its own means. It is an unlimited non-rivalrous resource. Yet, it isn’t shared freely. What began as a differentiator is now the model itself. Platforms that accumulate user data disrupt industries wield disproportionate influence and create silos. This leads to data domination.
The world is just waking up to this. India should too.
There are multiple risks from data domination: violation of privacy, data colonisation, and a winner-takes-all scenario that stifles innovation and competition. This isn’t just a technology challenge but also a policy one.
We must invert the data. It has to be owned by the user and used only with her consent. Individuals should be in control of their data. It should be used to empower the individual, not the state, or the companies.
What we need, apart from a strong data protection law, is an efficient consent process. This could take the form of data consent, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs )that allow consent collection, storage, and audits. And at any time, users have the right to pull out their data. They can choose what they want to be part of, and what they don’t.
This prevents data colonisation, yet enables and empowers AI. It tilts the privacy debate in favour of the user. And it creates real user choice at every level. Data is empowering in the hands of people. Inverting it allows freedom and choice. This is data democracy.
Given the speed at which Indians are adopting the digital life, India will go from a data-poor country to a data-rich one in three years. India has a unique digital infrastructure, a set of serendipitously developed public APIs, such as eSign, Unified Payments Interface, Bharat Interface for Money, the Goods and Services Tax Network and eKYC, developed as public goods.
It also has a robust authentication infrastructure. India is the only country in the world that can empower every resident with her own data, thanks to the technology infrastructure for inversion of data available due to Aadhaar and India Stack. What it now needed is a standard and secure consent process for users to get their own data to advance their lives and a data protection law.
Together, these can enrich India and Indians.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]What is LEAF Coalition?
Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.