Geoprivacy for indigenous biodiversity management data

Back Published 8 November 2024

Published In

Manaaki Whenua ecologists Cecilia Arienti and Dr Dean Anderson were recent co-authors, with researchers from the University of Auckland, Simon Fraser University in British Colombia, Canada, and communications consultant Waitangi Wood, on an important research paper that proposes a mechanism for scientists, environmental managers and indigenous land stewards to securely store data on the web while protecting the data sovereignty of indigenous peoples.

The resulting approach protects data that is shared online with sovereign data owners via public-key encryption and tamper-free blockchain notarisation (for example, about the specific location of taonga species) but also permits sharing an anonymised, less accurate dataset with less privileged users (for example, a “geomasked” or “obfuscated”, but still useful, version of the taonga location data). One important aspect of the approach is that no third party is needed to manage security or access to the data: the information remains in the direct control of the people to which it belongs.

The proposed application was designed for protecting and sharing data pertaining to Biodiversity Management Areas stewarded by Māori iwi and hapu, but is applicable globally in the context of indigenous data sovereignty.