Managing Sustainability in the Age of Intelligent Machines

Can AI + IoT save the wild things?

The United Nations’ first comprehensive report on biodiversity released in June is sobering evidence that human economic development has created a crisis that threatens the extinction of over 1 million species of plants and animals on earth in the coming years.

Species loss-driven mainly by climate change, loss of habitat, overfishing, deforestation, pollution and other man-made activities — has accelerated at a rate that is tens to hundreds of times faster than in the past, the report said.

The destruction of nature by the razing of forests, overhunting and fishing, pollution and the climate emergency has slashed wildlife populations by 60% since 1970 and plant extinctions are running at a “frightening” rate, according to scientists. The web of life that provides the food, clean air and water on which society ultimately depends is being dismantled by unsustainable methods of production and wasteful lifestyles, say conservationists.

Technology Can Help

The latest alarming warning from Mother Earth comes at a time when the high tech industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift that many analysts are calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Basically, the term applies to a…