水产划地盘，GPS来帮忙 / 四六文摘

2018-05-28

Samuel-Richard Bogobley is wearing a bright orange life vest and leaning precariously over the edge of a fishing canoe on the Volta River estuary, a gorgeous wildlife refuge where Ghana's biggest river meets the Gulf of Guinea.

塞缪尔-理查德.波哥布雷正穿着亮橙色的救生背心，在沃尔特河口的一艘渔船上冒险地探出身去，这里是一处壮观的野生动物保护区，在这里加纳最大的河流汇入了几内亚湾。

He's looking for a bamboo rod poking a couple feet above the surface.

他正在寻找一根露出水面几英尺高的竹竿。

When he finds it, he holds out a computer tablet and taps the screen.

当他找到竹竿猴，他拿出一个平板电脑，触碰着屏幕。

Then he motions for the captain to move the boat forward as he scans the water for the next rod.

然后他示意船长继续往前开，同时开始搜寻水面上的下一个竹竿。

It's slow work.

工作进展缓慢。

But once it's completed, it could pave the way for significant new legal protections for the property rights of marginalized communities across Africa.

不过一旦完成了，它将可以推动对非洲边缘化社区财产权利新的法律保护的前进步伐。

"Before you can start to recognize a fishery, you need to have a lot of data," says Bogobley, a researcher with Hen Mpoano, a Ghanaian nonprofit that supports small-scale fishers.

“在你认识水产业之前，你需要很多的数据，”波哥布雷说，他是一名亨.姆波诺的研究员，这是一个加纳的支持小规模渔民们的非盈利机构。

"These people don't have any platform to fight for what is theirs."

“这些人们没有任务平台来捍卫属于自己的权利。”

The Volta River is rich with clams, harvested year-round by a bustling community of several hundred fishermen and women.

沃尔特河盛产蛤蜊，每年都有几百名打捞蛤蜊的男人和女人组成一个熙熙攘攘的团体。

The meat is packaged for sale across West Africa, while the shells are ground into an additive for whitewash and chicken feed.

蛤蜊肉打包好后直销西非，同时贝壳会被碾碎作为石灰水或者鸡饲料的添加剂。

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The riverbed itself is divided into intricate real-estate parcels, each one an underwater clam "farm" with its own caretaker.

河床本身也被精细划分成了一块块地产，每一块蛤蜊“农场”都有自己的主人。

The farms have become a flashpoint in a broader conflict over the land rights of indigenous peoples in Africa: The clam fishers have no legal claim to their farms, and are under increasing pressure as they compete for prime real estate with the booming tourism industry and cope with the impacts of climate change.

渔场跟非洲土著民的土地产权争斗一触即发：蛤蜊渔民们的农场没有法律所有权，同时在跟日益繁荣的旅游业争夺地产权时他们也面临更多的压力，还要适应气候变化带来的影响。

In March, Bogobley and his colleagues began mapping out the clam plots with GPS-enabled tablets.

三月份，波哥布雷和他的同事们开始用带有GPS的平板电脑画出蛤蜊田的位置。

It's the latest example of how satellite mapping is being deployed as a key solution to land-rights conflicts across the continent.

这是利用卫星地图来作为解决非洲的土地产权纠纷关键方法的最新案例。

Experts say it's the first time it's ever been used in a marine setting.

专家称这是它首次运用在水产业中。