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POST EDIT: The solar-powered smartphones protecting the world’s rainforests from deforestation

With support from the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, American technologist Topher White has installed a network of repurposed phones in vulnerable areas of forest

These listening devices can detect and report illegal activity to local custodians, as well as live-stream the sounds of wildlife in remote regions

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Topher White and ranger José Manuel Anapa put a Forest Guardian in place in the Canandé Reserve. Photo: Rolex / Stefan Walter

Published: 4:15pm, 25 Mar 2021Updated: 2:42pm, 26 Aug 2021

This article is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Saving the Amazon’s giant arapaima fish from extinction; helping people suffering from a broken back to walk again; converting some of the 340 million tonnes of plastic waste churned out globally every year into a new source of sustainable wealth. These projects are just some of the winners of the Rolex Awards for Enterprise (RAE).

Launched in 1976 by then chairman André Heiniger and initially intended as a one-off, the RAE has evolved into a decades-long effort to recognise and support entrepreneurs offering out-of-the-box solutions to some of the toughest challenges facing humanity and the planet. Today, each winner receives a grant of 200,000 Swiss francs (US$215,000) for their work.

Rolex estimates that its 150 RAE laureates have helped improve the lives of no fewer than five million people around the world.

With the award now linked to the watchmaker’s 2019 “Perpetual Planet” campaign, the environmental impact of the projects is staggering: 18 million trees planted; 23 endangered species protected and hundreds of others discovered; and 17 major ecosystems preserved, including 57,600 sq km of the Amazon rainforest.

Installing the Forest Guardians in Ecuador’s Canandé Reserve has been a physically challenging task for White and his team. Photo: Rolex / Stefan Walter

Among the five RAE laureates and five associate laureates recognised in 2019 is Topher White. The American technologist has come up with an innovative solution to combat deforestation – a serial source of carbon emissions and driver of global climate change – while empowering local communities and expanding scientific access to wildlife in some of the most remote rainforests across the Amazon, Central America and Asia. And he does it all through an object we carry around in our pockets every day.