Sustainable management of non-timber forest products in Peruvian Amazonia: lessons learnt from participatory use of smartphone technology

Over a billion people rely on tropical forest resources for their livelihoods, so sustainable resource use is essential for long-term human and ecosystem health. Smartphone technologies are increasingly proposed as a cost-effective and accessible way of widening community participation in environmental monitoring, but existing studies typically focus on the technological capabilities of smartphones for data collection, rather than how they represent local community interests or affect conservation outcomes. To address this gap, we report on the participatory and technical potential and limitations of smartphone-assisted collaboration for sustainable management of aguaje palms (Mauritia flexuosa), a commercially valuable species in the Peruvian Amazon. We assessed the potential of smartphone-based data collection, using OpenDataKit (ODK), for monitoring forest resources, working with a community management group and the Peruvian National Service of Natural Protected Areas to quantify and map the distribution, abundance and productivity of aguaje palms. Our study highlights tensions between technical and participatory elements of the process. We demonstrate the accessibility of ODK to users with varied levels of digital literacy, its ability to represent multiple interests and the potential to innovatively combine small ODK datasets with vegetation data and Google Earth Engine mapping. However, our work highlights the risk that dependence on digital technologies can exclude stakeholders with poor connectivity, since the process mainly engaged digitally connected partners. Based on this experience, we provide four lessons to support good practice and avoid misalignment of technological and participatory interests in the design and implementation of participatory environmental management using smartphone and open-source technology.