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Lions out of Bounds? Reflections on Digital Technology and Matristic Design to address Human-Wildlife Conflict

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Lions out of Bounds? Reflections on Digital Technology and
Matristic Design to address Human-Wildlife Conflict
Margarita Grinko
Chair of Information Systems and
New Media, University of Siegen
margarita.grinko@uni-siegen.de
Tanja Aal
Chair Of Information Systems, esp. IT
For the Aging Society, University of
Siegen
tanja.ertl@uni-siegen.de
Konstantin Aal
Chair of Information Systems and
New Media, University of Siegen
konstantin.aal@uni-siegen.de
Helmut Hauptmeier
iSchool, University of Siegen
helmut.hauptmeier@uni-siegen.de
Volker Wulf
Chair of Information Systems and
New Media, University of Siegen
volker.wulf@uni-siegen.de
ABSTRACT
Since 2014, Botswana’s Okavango Delta has been declared a UN-
ESCO World Heritage site. One eect has been to parse the conser-
vation area from human settlements, thus aggravating the conict
between local cattle farmers and predatory animals, particularly
lions. In response, the LionAlert system, launched together with
CLAWS Conservancy, is warning farmers of lions passing invisible
digital geofences and thus helps prevent attacks on cattle as well
as the poaching of the endangered predators. Because technology
needs to be embedded in a larger, holistic view of the conict par-
ties’ practices, needs and abilities, we apply the Matristic Design
approach focusing on cooperation on the ground which bears matri-
archal roots. Here, we outline how we implemented this approach
in the LionAlert project, while building a tech-based alert system to
mitigate Human-Wildlife-Conict (HWC), and what can be done to
further enhance human-wildlife coexistence: access to technology,
education, and support of traditional farming practices.
CCS CONCEPTS
Human-centered computing;Human computer interac-
tion (HCI); Collaborative and social computing; Ubiquitous
and mobile computing;;Applied computing;Computers
in other domains;
KEYWORDS
Human-Wildlife Conict, Participatory Design, Design Case Study,
Matristic Design, Global South
ACM Reference Format:
Margarita Grinko, Tanja Aal, Konstantin Aal, Helmut Hauptmeier,
and Volker Wulf. 2023. Lions out of Bounds? Reections on Digital Tech-
nology and Matristic Design to address Human-Wildlife Conict. In 4th
African Human Computer Interaction Conference (AfriCHI 2023), November
27–December 01, 2023, East London, South Africa. ACM, New York, NY, USA,
5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3628096.3628742
Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM acknowledges that this contribution was
authored or co-authored by an employee, contractor or aliate of a national govern-
ment. As such, the Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to publish or
reproduce this article, or to allow others to do so, for Government purposes only.
AfriCHI 2023, November 27–December 01, 2023, East London, South Africa
©2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM ISBN 979-8-4007-0887-9/23/11. . . $15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3628096.3628742
1 INTRODUCTION
To whom does the Okavango Delta belong? Over 600 species inhabit
the UNESCO World Heritage site in Northern Botswana, humans,
cattle and lions being some of them. The latter three species are part
of an ongoing conict between predator and prey, between farmers
and wildlife, culture and conservation, humans and nature. This
complex issue is reaching every part of the society. For example,
cattle are incredibly valuable to local subsistence farmers, being a
marker of social status and often their only source of nancial secu-
rity, however, they usually roam free around the Delta and become
easy prey for predators. Separation between human settlements
and the national park has been established articially [
6
], herding
has lost its reputation, and this led to loss of traditional knowledge
and practices. This, in turn, can lead to retaliation and further threat
to the endangered species. Botswana’s government has imposed a
hunting ban on lions and tried to mitigate the conict by providing
compensation to farmers in case of depredation. However, it has
been very low and farmers have to wait years for their money.
To try to mitigate some aspects of the conict prior to this study,
a GPS-based non-automated lion warning application was deployed
in the Pride in our Prides project by CLAWS Conservancy [
9
]. It
tries to combine technology (the alert system) and tradition, where
herders are employed to take care of the cattle and traditional ways
of building a kraal (traditional cattle enclosure) are re-established.
Seven years after the start of the LionAlert project, in which we have
been involved as socio-informatics [
32
] researchers and designers
since 2016, the coexistence with lions remains challenging: for ex-
ample, local participation and acceptance of lions has remained too
low to unleash the program’s potential. Why does this happen and
(how) can we address this? Here, we try to better understand how
a digital conservation [
3
] approach to ecology, namely Matristic
Design [14], could help mitigate the conict.
The current LionAlert system is based on geofences: dynamic
digital borders that virtually separate the space in which it is alright
for lions to be, from the human perspective, and the one where
they are ‘out of bounds’, because they pose a threat to free-roaming
cattle. Such spaces encompass villages, cattle posts, and mobile
cattle enclosures. These borders can be seen, added and changed by
administrators of the system only, who can also add new human and
non-human users to the system (see Figure 1). Newly collared lions
are named by the community to enable ownership. Currently, ve
19
AfriCHI 2023, November 27–December 01, 2023, East London, South Africa Margarita Grinko et al.
Figure 1: View of the lion positions in the LionAlert admin interface.
lions in the study area encompassing three villages and adjacent
cattle posts are wearing a collar equipped with a GPS sensor. When a
collared lion trespasses on a border, a warning is issued to registered
users in this area. The alert comes in Setswana or English, as text
message or voice alert (see Figure 2). Cattle farmers can gather
their cattle and take them to an enclosure for the night or until the
lion leaves the geofence. While this approach has been eective
in reducing predation cases up to 50%, it does not come without
signicant challenges.
Our role as socio-informatics researchers lies in user-centered
design based on profound insights into local culture, practices and
needs [
24
,
25
]. Several eld stays have given us an understanding
of opportunities and challenges in designing with and for marginal-
ized communities in the Global South [
11
,
14
,
30
]. In contrast to
Participatory Design or Grounded Design [
7
,
25
], in our approach,
Matristic Design, we think about bottom-up digital design and
beyond, which means that we question the roles of researchers
and participants on the ground but also in the long term and con-
sider potential short-term and long-term eects in design and its
appropriation. To achieve a sustainable co-existence, we propose
applying Matristic Design [
14
] based on the conceptualization of
historic matristic cultures, originally proposed by Arturo Escobar
[
13
]. Its central values are inclusion, participation, collaboration,
respect, understanding, sacredness, and the recurrent cyclic ren-
ovation of life. To our knowledge, it has not yet been applied in
the eld so far, but we argue it is necessary to help reevaluate how
complex community issues can be addressed using technology in
the long-term. In our note, we describe to what extent this approach
has been reected in our research, and what has yet to be done to
address its challenges.
2 INCLUSION, PARTICIPATION AND
COLLABORATION WITH RESPECT AND
UNDERSTANDING
From the beginning of the project in 2016, when CLAWS started col-
laring lions and we started building the alert system together, local
villagers and especially farmers have been included in the system:
both as recipients of lion alerts and participants in our research.
As socio-informatics researchers, we have sought to redesign the
system in a more user-centered and interactive way. Against this
background, the participants take an active, co-creative role in a
collaborative process that has a respectful approach to the local cul-
ture and diverse mentalities as precondition for an authentic access
to the people and their local expertise. We have conducted numer-
ous interviews, participatory workshops, and user tests with 43
participants (farmers, herders, tourist guides, local politicians, and
teachers) between 21 and 65+, among them eight women, in three
visits (2017, 2018 and 2020). We discussed the system, reviewed its
impact, and asked participants for ideas on its improvement (see
Table 1). Although not all ideas can be implemented within the
scope of our project, the study has helped create an autonomous,
more dynamic system [30].
The participatory study did not come without challenges: for
example, asking participants to give their opinion in a group setting
and suggest functions to an unknown software where most of
the users have never worked with a computer or even smartphone
have not worked out well in this specic setting which is why
long-term bottom-up research is necessary. When designing alerts,
there has to be a balance between understandability, accuracy and
safety (of both the human and predator) a problem which is not
unknown in digital conservation [
21
] and take into account (digi-
tal) literacy [
4
]. One approach to enable participation is to increase
digital literacy by conveying knowledge in so-called Computer
Clubs [
1
,
23
,
26
,
29
,
33
], thus providing safe spaces for learning,
exchange, and cooperation throughout the generations. This poses
20
Lions out of Bounds? Reflections on Digital Technology and Matristic Design to address
Human-Wildlife Conflict AfriCHI 2023, November 27–December 01, 2023, East London, South Africa
Figure 2: Example of a lion alert in English.
a challenge in itself because of limited access to power and network
on-site. However, the need for digital education was perceived as a
very important topic. In additional meetings with regional school
headmasters and ocials, the idea of the Computer Clubs was well
received but not yet realized since access to resources and funds
poses a huge challenge. In all our endeavors we have to consider
that technology only works as a support for indispensable measures
targeted at the human dimension [14].
3 COMBINING TRADITION AND
TECHNOLOGY CONSIDERING SACREDNESS
AND THE ALWAYS-RECURRING CYCLIC
RENOVATION OF LIFE
In our workshops, participants have voiced numerous suggestions
on how to address the conict (see Table 1). These have been mainly
non-technical and based on the desire to be physically distant from
the predators because of the lack of knowledge about lions and their
nature. On the one hand, alerts make the lions more predictable,
and, to some extent, controllable. However, while cattle have high
value in society, we found that farmers often do not protect their
cattle from predators even after they receive an alert. On the other
hand, not recognizing the (limited) utility of the virtual barrier,
participants were asking for tangible, physical barriers like fences
around lions, articial water holes which would lure cattle away
from lions, a means to scare lions away, and more enclosures for
cattle themselves. The challenges of on-the-ground measures to
solve HWC have been researched in literature [
10
,
18
]. While some
farmers still illegally kill lions in retaliation today [
19
], others have
understood during the course of the project how important the
lions are for the continuity of the ecosystem in which and through
which they themselves live.
To help farmers protect their cattle, CLAWS have started a com-
munal herding program, where one village’s cattle are taken care
of day and night by six trained and paid herders. The cattle are
moved in a mobile kraal in which they are gathered at night, thus
reducing the number of predation cases to zero. Here, the alert
system plays a large role in planning where the cattle can safely
graze during the day. Further automation of this system, such as
algorithmic prediction of lion movement and a decision support
system for herders, may enhance usability and increase safety on
both sides sustainably [8].
Many inhabitants of the Okavango Delta today have little under-
standing of the wildlife and ecosystem surrounding them but are
showing an interest in learning more. The herding program is one
example of the ‘revival’ of traditional knowledge, which manifests
itself in dierent forms, among them stories. We would thus like to
convey old and new information about lions, herding, and ecology,
using (digital) storytelling [
5
,
12
,
22
]. Along with being embedded
into tradition, such approaches appealing to emotion have proven
to be more eective to gain support for conservation eorts than
Table 1: Overview of combined and categorized participant ideas (2018-2020)
Category Ideas Implemented?
Relocation Fencing of lions
Relocation of lions
Drilling of additional boreholes to attract cattle away from lion areas
No
No
No
Additional
personnel
Trained herders
More employees for the project
Employees to scare away lions
Yes
Yes
Yes; ongoing
Material support Stable kraals
Torches, guns, bangers etc. to scare lions away
Binoculars to see lions from afar
More and reliable compensation after a lion kill
Additional phones and airtime to receive alerts
Partly (lottery system)
No
No
No
No
Education More information on lions and how to behave when encountering them
More information on the system and project
Planned
Yes; ongoing
Technological
improvements
Higher tracking intensity
More informative alerts including distance and direction
Customizable alert modality
Computer in the village to spread messages
Yes
No; safety considerations
Yes
Planned
Other Easier reporting of losses
Improved cattle caretaking and herding processes
Planned
Yes
21
AfriCHI 2023, November 27–December 01, 2023, East London, South Africa Margarita Grinko et al.
simply presenting facts [
27
]. CLAWS, like many conservation orga-
nizations, is already communicating locally and creating awareness,
which is even more crucial to gain local support [
27
,
28
]. Naming
lions and making them a participatory actor in the community is
an important part of such new stories. To encourage this endeavor,
existing channels of communication should be exploited more e-
ciently: i.e., postings in public places, billboards, radio, social media,
theatre plays, village gatherings, or local multipliers who spread the
word in community meetings, events, and one-to-one conversations.
While there is no direct encounter with lions, such analogue aspects
and “conservation by algorithm” [
2
] can help create a feeling of
closeness to wild predators on the long term. The before mentioned
Computer Clubs and technology like webcams or citizen science
apps [
16
,
17
] could aid in this. However, there is a tradeo between
information density and availability on the one hand and lion, and,
consequently, human security on the other hand.
The integration and appropriation of existing actions and ideas
for their expansion for even more sustainability of a minimized con-
ict remains challenging. Against the background of the complexity
of this conict and our matristic approach, further questions arise:
How we can involve all stakeholders and ensure their (ongoing) par-
ticipation and collaboration over time? How to convey knowledge
and stories so that we reach everyone? How can we meet human
and non-human interests or accept that some cannot be fully met
and achieve the goal of participants taking ownership? And above
all, how can we assess the consequences for local society, ecology
and economy taking into account pluralistic perspectives?
4 CONCLUSION
Using technological innovation to address HWC, our work con-
tributes to the evolving research area of digital conservation and
livestock husbandry [
3
,
15
]. At the same time, our research has
shown limits of this approach in the context of HWC in rural
Botswana, such as limited access to technology and lack of ac-
tive response to alerts [
14
]. Therefore, instead of being limited to
“techno-x thinking” [
3
] also called “solutionism” [
20
], it inspired
us to look into a more bottom-up, holistic approach, namely Ma-
tristic Design, to addressing these limits, to which a combination of
technology and tradition with a focus on community [
31
] including
a variety of dierent stakeholders (also non-human actors) may
be the answer. While Matristic Design can help to build sustain-
able cooperation (not only in conservation), it can also potentially
slow down the process and hinder much needed interventions and
innovations, because it takes time to involve all the dierent stake-
holders, and also to build trust and solve problems along the design
process. While in this paper, we could only describe a fraction of the
conict’s complexity, we are looking forward to actively exploring,
applying and further developing Matristic Design, in the project
context as well as elsewhere, and working on nding the answers
to the questions mentioned above, also by bringing in new insights
from eld studies and mobilizing local resources.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank our research partners at CLAWS and our par-
ticipants for their cooperation and contribution to this work. Also,
we thank our reviewers for their interested and helpful feedback
on our draft.
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Conference Paper
Full-text available
Based on our research in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, which began in 2017, we describe our LionAlert system. It protects inhabitants and their cattle from predators (in this case lions) via cell phone alerts and thus aims to mitigate the local Human-Wildlife-Conflict. The technical development was accompanied by various on-the-ground measures and activities. While we conduct user-oriented and participatory research in the real setting by means of a Grounded Design (GD) approach, we continuously reflect on our own attitude as researchers. Here, we present a socio-technical solution strategy to underpin this future-oriented methodology by means of storytelling. Against the background of a design fiction utopia, told from a Western perspective, current real events of a Western society are then critically reflected and dystopian approaches are shown.
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