With the ongoing US drone campaigns in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, it seems like many people have specifically labeled drones agents of wanton death and destruction. The more informed individual might label drones as tools of surveillance, both foreign and internal, as many more drones are simply observers rather than predators. Still, both viewpoints give drones an extremely negative context.
This isn’t really fair.
Like many other modern technologies, including the internet, satellites, and computers, military uses have driven the explosion of drone technology seen in the past decade. Thanks to that, drones are now beginning to see applications outside military excursions. Uses in search and rescue, forest fire prevention, personal recreation, and conservation are becoming more and more valid as drone technology is refined. Ecologist Lian Pin Koh, gives a good explanation on how this happens. His team has developed a cheap, reliable drone to specifically observe animals, poachers, and plantations, while monitoring other statistics about the rainforests in greater detail than was ever previously possible. Silent drones equipped with GPS and thermal vision cameras can pinpoint the changing metrics of rainforests and then effectively map them for use by authorities or ecologists. Now, Koh has begun to partner with several militaries and police forces in forest-threatened states to roll out his new drones.
Nobody is excusing the death that drones have created in legally questionable strikes or that the world could become a much more dangerous place with a lack or privacy if their use isn’t regulated, but not all uses for drones are so immediately worrying. Drones, like computers, can be used to harm and be used to help, it all depends on the person behind the screen.
If you have 10 minutes, watch Koh’s presentation. See what he has to say about drones and the environment, because there are two sides to every issue.
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