Guardian Connector
Thriving lands and waters through data-informed guardianship
Indigenous Peoples govern or manage a quarter of the Earth's lands. This includes nearly 40% of the planet's remaining intact ecosystems and some of its most biodiverse and carbon-rich places.
While extractive industries deploy state-of-the-art technologies to locate and exploit natural resources, Indigenous Peoples' robust data and monitoring efforts have too often lacked comparable data infrastructure to more effectively defend their territories.
A new biocultural monitoring tool – Guardian Connector – improves Indigenous Peoples' access to culturally responsive, high-quality data infrastructure.
Guardian Connector was co-designed with Indigenous Peoples by Nia Tero and Conservation Metrics.
Ogiek community resource center in Laboot, Mount Elgon, Kenya. Courtesy of Rudo Kemper at Conservation Metrics, Incorporated.
Guardian Connector is an open-source secure data integration and monitoring platform.
It positions Indigenous Peoples to collect, manage and own data about their territories on their terms. It streamlines the path of data collection to action, helping users create powerful advocacy tools that support guardianship of their lands and waters.
More about Guardian Connector
Biocultural monitoring refers to the practice of tracking ecosystems and cultural data to better understand and reflect on the interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples and the places they call home.
Data sovereignty refers to Indigenous Peoples' self-determined right to collect, own and protect their own data.
As the U.N. Human Rights Council's Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples notes: "Indigenous Peoples remain largely excluded from the collection, use and application of data about them, their lands and their cultures." Guardian Connector offers Indigenous Peoples a key solution to this growing digital divide.
Guardian Connector is a tool that combines technology and ancestral knowledge to enhance the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ territories.
At no cost to Indigenous organizations, users can combine different kinds of data to create advocacy tools and manage knowledge. Some examples of how partners can use this technology include:
- Partners can access a land use change alert system to detect illicit activities. Satellites automatically detect the activity, and guardians investigate and photograph the sites, providing on-the-ground verification of the threat. Guardian Connector combines both data sources, which partners can use to create maps with layered information, a strong advocacy tool to address the incursion.
- Partners also can use Guardian Connector to document sites of importance to their cultures within their territories, adding photos, voice memos and other images.
- Partners can use Guardian Connector to visualize the information gathered related to their life plans.
- Nia Tero and Conservation Metrics provide technical support to partners for platform onboarding, planning research, developing advocacy tools and territorial defense.
At this time, 24 Indigenous organizations use Guardian Connector. Combined, this accounts for 46.5 million hectares of land – an area larger than California. Users are based in the Solomon Islands, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Namibia and Kenya.
We estimate that current users’ monitored lands experience about 41% less tree loss relative to surrounding 10-hectare buffer zones.
By 2029, we aim to expand Guardian Connector by 25% to reach a total of 30 users who oversee more than 69 million hectares of land.
Guardian Connector’s core code is publicly available to look at, share and customize. Prospective users can inspect code rather than rely on privacy policies written by lawyers. They can audit how data flows through the system, verify that sovereignty principles are respected in practice and adapt the platform to their governance protocols.
As a biocultural monitoring tool, Guardian Connector advances data-driven climate solutions that center Indigenous Peoples as co-creators and stewards of technology rather than end-users.
Many platforms charge prohibitive fees, store data externally, limit community ownership, and cannot be audited or modified. Each Guardian Connector server is a partner-owned hub tailored to local needs.
Users retain full ownership of their data, can export it easily and stop using the platform at any time.