At SERVIR-Amazonia we looked forward to the SERVIR Global annual meeting #SAGE2021 with the motto “Changing the world through Applied Sciences”.

“Let’s be advocates for using science for effective decision-making, put the tools and results of science in the hands of those who need it most. Mitigation and adaptation requires robust research and linking space to village. On behalf of everyone in NASA, thank you!” (Karen St. Germain, NASA Director of Earth Science Division)

“Reflection is as important as imagining and implementing. And celebrating successes. let’s not only look at the next problem to fix, and focus on impact of our innovation, reach and value” (Lawrence Friedl, Director Applied Science Program Earth Sciences Division) 

“The new administration puts focus on climate. SERVIR is well positioned to deliver on the new admin ambitions. Evidence, measurement and storytelling are critically important.” (Greg Collins, Deputy Assistant Administrator, USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security)

All of SERVIR: Collage of all SERVIR Hub teams 

“We work closely within our SERVIR-Amazonia team and with our Hub partners SIG, ACCA, Imaflora  and Ecociencia, under the leadership of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, to build trust and to aggressively expand strategic alliances with local partners for a sustainable process of co-developing services” Carlos Gasco, Program Director

“The partnership engagement pre-COVID, our geographically spread team and open internal communications helped SERVIR-Amazonia to be prepared and productive during lockdowns” Brian Zutta, Science and Data lead

Every Big Win is the sum of small wins. “Our user engagement activities were the big win over the last year. They are fundamental for a sustainable process of geospatial service co-development. Our assumption is that the better the user engagement, the higher the service quality and uptake by decision-makers.” José Leandro Fernandes, User Engagement lead

Illegal Gold Mine monitoring is a geospatial service with strong collaboration ties between SERVIR-Amazonia and SERVIR West Africa.

Foster Mensah, CERSGIS: “We could build up the service in Google Earth Engine interacting with SERVIR-Amazonia. We want to continue sharing code and data.” 

Sidney Novoa, ACCA: “The collaboration and exchange of methodologies with SERVIR West Africa helped us gain time and efficiency in the development of the service”

The two Hubs will work together on technical front but also on inter Hub capacity building and service delivery mechanisms.

Acca’s Milagros Becerra, GIS Specialist, and CIAT’s Sophie Alvarez, MEL consultant, presented the Theory of Change of the “Gold Mining in Peru” service.

“Articulate the logic of service early on and in details. Revisit periodically. Do not under-estimate the efforts and resources needed to work with stakeholders“, advised Zoltan Milic from the global support team.

The 4 AASTs of SERVIR-Amazonia presented their research and advances in service co-development.

“When we start working in ASTs we need to think about re-usability at the design stage, and build relationships with other organizations. This will be the legacy of our research“, indicated David Saah.

SERVIR-Amazonia partners Imaflora and Acca produced 5-minute videos to showcase the progress on the service developments that they lead. 

Vinicius Guidotti, Geoprocessing Coordinator at Imaflora: “The tool that we are developing uses satellite imagery and deforestation data so that users can identify new deforestation areas and share the information via a smartphone app, enriching the platform. We are currently launching the beta version and expect the service to be launched in July 2021.”

• Read more about this service
• Watch the video

Sydney Novoa, Director GIS, ACCA: “This service provides a reliable and timely source of information on gold mining activities. It improves the effectiveness of planned interventions to stop the illegal activities. We expect a reduction in criminal activities and river contamination that affect the local population.” Read more about this service

For SERVIR-Amazonia, connecting space to village has meant documenting and communicating the process of co-developing geospatial information services, in order to make partners’ roles, commitment, and long-term vision more visible.

For 2021, the small group discussion concluded that the main goal now is to generate content that enables people to easily and quickly understand information, service purpose and impact, and to enable beneficiaries to actually adopt them.

“SERVIR-Amazonia communications strategy supports its 3 strategic approaches. It empowers its consortium partners, promotes usage of data, and information by the global geospatial community and involves decision-makers in the uptake of the services in their institutions.” (Simone Staiger, communications coordinator)

“The future of gender and inclusion in SERVIR is putting equity plans into practice at the community and regional level. We are practicing this with the AST led by Naiara Pinto working on women-led participatory mapping”. Marina Irigoyen, Gender Advisor

We also witnessed an important conversation of 3 incredible award-winning SERVIR women, Nancy Searby from USAID, Africa Flores from NASA and Catherine Nakalembe from NASA Harvest. The three SERVIR colleagues who won awards in 2020 interview each other about the values of persistence, teamwork, excellence and friendship, and how those shaped their experiences.

“I like how our Program is striving for improvement towards excellence illustrated by the way we continue to improve SERVIR processes and tools“, said Nancy Searby