Format/Structure

The first half of the panel will consist of standard paper presentations, followed by a combined panel style Q&A and then breakout discussion groups.

Long Abstract

From rising inequality to rising oceans, the intertwined social and ecological crises of the 21stcentury demand new approaches to environmental governance. Conservation has become a central arena where competing visions of justice, control, and sustainable use are negotiated. Emergent technologies such as high-resolution remote sensing, AI and machine learning, Smart Earth tech and environmental genomics now offer an unprecedented capacity to monitor, model, and evaluate conservation interventions across spatial and temporal scales, and are rapidly being adopted by conservation actors. These technical capacities are fundamentally changing the way that data is produced and analysed, however they risk obscuring the underlying power dynamics that shape how this work is conducted and the resulting environmental policies and interventions. Moreover, despite the potential these methodological improvements provide for more holistic analysis, evaluation criteria frequently remain confined to narrow ecological or economic metrics, overlooking social, political, and historical dimensions. 

The goal of this panel is to delve into whether and how emergent technologies are changing the conservation landscape vis-à-vis decision making, monitoring and enforcement, and prevailing narrative construction, and explore the social justice implications of current and likely future uses. We ask: how can technology be used to better surface, rather than conceal, questions of power, inequality, and holistic impact? How can transdisciplinary methods help unpack who benefits from conservation, and bears the costs, and whose knowledge systems count? 

Suggested topics and themes include:

•  Risks and benefits of increasing integration of tech into conservation practice and decision-making, including how broader social structures influence who can make use of and benefit from it

• Surveillance and human rights in contested conservation landscapes

• Prevailing technology-related narratives across different geographies

• Expanding conservation evaluation criteria across disciplines and datasets.

•  The geopolitical ecologies and political economies of emergent conservation technologies and data value chains

This Panel has 4 pending paper proposals.
Propose paper