Why this tech company is spilling all its secrets

Her solution: DIY.

Jane’s husband, a helicopter engineer, was quickly roped in. Their first production was the rigging for a 360-degree underwater camera. In the market, it would have cost her thousands of dollars. “Cory was like, ‘I can build that.’”

Their garage became a workshop, churning out several innovations. The contraptions Cory Rhodes built were streamlined for the job at hand, made of local (or recycled) materials. They were also modular, therefore adjustable, and well-suited to constant improvement. And they cost as little as a fifth of the market price.

Several garage productions later, the couple realised that they had a viable business model. They quit their jobs, and started their own climate tech company, Distant Imagery. “And I always think it's so cheeky because there's not really a lot of reasoning behind some of the costs for climate tech,” says Jane.

It's made in a garage, out of plywood and recycled materials, and customised for planting mangroves. ©Distant Imagery

According to Jane, Distant Imagery has planted over 9 million mangrove seeds to-date, using wooden self engineered drones and planting rigging first constructed in their garage. The drones shoot the seeds into targeted sowing grounds at a selected speed so that they end up at the optimum depth to sprout into healthy saplings. Later, drones monitor their growth, and collect data to further optimise planting techniques. She says 40% of these seeds will grow into mature trees. Distant Imagery also makes customised communication and data collection and analysis tools for clients in several countries in the global north and south.

The failure to create widespread and affordable access to climate technology all over the world has been a major impediment of the climate movement. Despite some successes, the overall transfer of technology has remained an integral but unfulfilled part of every major climate agreement.

Could Distant Imagery’s do-it-yourself approach hold an answer?

Abu Dhabi is one of seven emirates (territories) that make up the United Arab Emirates, best known for their endless deserts and unimaginable oil wealth. The UAE waterfront is speckled with icons of modern opulence, like the Burj Khalifa—the world’s tallest skyscraper, and the palm islands—manmade archipelagos shaped like palm trees, replete with hotels, malls, villas, and marinas.

Dubai's Palm Jumeirah island with the Burj Al Arab in the foreground. The UAE's fabulous wealth is mostly from fossil fuels. ©Jason Mrachina

Not as well known, are hundreds of natural islands and lagoons on this same coastline, interspersed with diverse blue forest ecosystems. Abu Dhabi alone has 164 sq. km of mangroves. As early as the 1970s, long before many world leaders were even aware of climate change, the UAE’s first president, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Salman had initiated efforts to protect and restore mangroves. He had foreign varieties brought in to try and enrich the local flora, but these failed to take root. Only the local species, Avicennia marina, could survive the arid Gulf climate.

Decades later, in 2009, new research began to popularise the idea of “blue carbon” among scientists, highlighting the vital role that marine ecosystems like mangroves play in sequestering carbon (Nelleman et al., 2009). By this time, Abu Dhabi’s restoration efforts were already seeing significant success (Sheikh Saud Foundation, 2023). The country began running large blue carbon projects.

And a younger Jane Glavan had found herself unexpectedly at the forefront of them. In her late thirties, she had left her home in Ottawa to go backpacking around the world. Several months later, having spent the last of her money—$2.50 on a bag of chips and a soft drink—she boarded a flight to her sister who had just moved to Abu Dhabi. It was a place she had never heard of until then.

“I was supposed to be here only one month,” says Jane, “and then decided to apply at the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, and got in. And then within a month I ended up on the starting team of the Abu Dhabi Global Environment Data Initiative (AGEDI) and that was so phenomenal career-wise.” Two decades later, she still hasn’t returned to Ottawa.

Jane Glavan and Cory Rhodes. ©Jane Glavan

As one might expect in a region blessed with great economic prosperity, Abu Dhabi’s blue forest ecosystems have not been immune to large-scale destruction from urban and industrial development (Burt, 2014). But the UAE has committed in its Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement of 2015 to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. With the country’s fossil fuel-driven economy growing unfettered, mangrove restoration projects are a way to balance out some of its emissions.

The government of Abu Dhabi is not an employer one might associate with budgetary difficulties. But almost two decades ago, trying to initiate some of their early blue carbon projects, much of the technology was too expensive even for AGEDI. Imagine what this might mean for green projects in the majority of countries.

Indeed, Jane is far from alone in her frustrations at the cost of climate technology. Particularly in the developing world, the adoption of green tech remains painstakingly slow. Despite the fact that new climate technology has been patented at a higher rate than other inventions, experts say the transfer of these technologies to developing countries remains “woefully small, and has increasingly become a contentious policy issue.” (Athreye et al., 2023) (Khor, 2012)

Many academics and lobbyists have advocated for stronger Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws, to encourage investment in new technology, and create mechanisms to share it with those who need it most. But on the ground, stronger IPR tend to hinder the transfer of technology to countries that have a low level of industrialisation (Kim, 2003). Moreover, the laws have empowered companies to widen their profit margins, and keep market prices high—locking out many third world buyers.

Distant Imagery has used high market prices to their advantage, marketing their own unique brand of customised green tech. But unlike most others in the field, their business model prefers to share, rather than monopolise their technological innovations.

In 1990, James Kairo arrived in the fishing communities of Gazi Bay, Kenya, as a master’s student studying mangrove restoration techniques. He observed that as the mangroves were thinning in the bay due to overexploitation and climate change, fish stocks were also declining. The mangroves were not only carbon sinks. They were crucial habitats for fish, crabs and countless other species of marine wildlife.

22 years later he co-founded Mikoko Pamoja project, which works with communities to restore and conserve mangroves, and by doing so, earns carbon credits that it can sell. Each hectare of mangrove stores 1,500 metric tonnes of carbon. In 2017, Mikoko Pamoja’s carbon credits were generating USD 12,000 annually for the organisation and its communities. James says their revenues have now reached USD 40,000. According to the UNDP, Mikoko Pamoja is the “first-ever blue carbon initiative to sell carbon credits from mangrove conservation activities for community development.”

“In carbon trading, the most critical thing is to be able to monitor, report and verify the captured carbon,” says James. “And it can be a very expensive endeavour.”

Years earlier, Jane had consulted with James to learn about the ecological process by which mangroves propagate naturally. She wanted to model her own restoration technique based on the natural pattern, for highest effectiveness. Now, Distant Imagery is returning the favour.

Along with a prototype drone, Jane’s team is sharing their entire process with Mikoko Pamoja in Kenya—and similar projects in Tonga, Brazil and Indonesia. From the wiring and assembling of the drone, to its methods for site selection, monitoring, reporting and validation (MRV), and everything else, will be passed onto the client teams.

Gazi Bay is home to the communities in Kenya with whom Mikoko Pamoja began working in 2002. ©Rob Barnes/GRID-Arendal

The Mikoko Pamoja crew in Vanga, Kenya. ©Amina Juma Hamza/KMFRI

Kairo says just the DIY drone technology alone will save them thousands of dollars. “We are going to use local materials, except for the camera and sensor. The frame will be local plywood. For wings we use 3D printing.”

But the benefits go beyond costs. “It will be our opportunity to bring technology to the people,” says James. Locals will learn to make and use the drones, and be empowered to adapt the equipment to local needs. The agreement with Distant Imagery is that they will report back all of their own innovations and customisations to help them implement the model locally—information which will be valuable R&D for Distant Imagery and all of its clients.

If most businesses make money by keeping the technology to themselves, then why doesn’t Distant Imagery do the same? Why not simply maximise profit?

“There's no need,” says Jane, explaining that operations in the global north and in the UAE provide enough profits to keep the company sustainable.

Jane considers the value added by sharing technology to be greater than additional profits. “It’s way more powerful for [the communities] to be self-sufficient. But also, they're testing and they’re modifying and they're giving ideas back to us about real-world needs, and we keep engineering new things to address those.

“What I don’t understand is why everyone doesn’t do it, because it’s such an obvious value!”

That technology can be accessible is also a concept that Jane wants to get through to young people. At each state of the mangrove plantation program, from seed collection to MRV, Distant Imagery works with young volunteers, usually towards the end of high school. Growing up in the posh and manicured UAE life doesn’t afford most students the opportunity to connect with nature, and it’s a chance for volunteers to get their hands in the dirt.

“It's the last years before they decide what they want to do with their life,” says Jane. “So, it’s our effort to get them really excited about science and tech.”

Even though the company has come a long way since its beginnings, Jane tries to give the volunteers a feel of how it all began.

“Cory was engineering everything and 3D printing and trying to figure out stuff and I was out there in the environment trying to test it. So, we were bare bones self-funded, and that story we wanted to tell the youth as well—it shouldn't be intimidating. There's adventure to this!”