- Convenors:
-
Ryan Unks
(ICTA-UAB)
Bilal Butt (University of Michigan)
- Format:
- Panel
Format/Structure
Traditional presentations and discussion of the critical political ecology of statistical and geospatial modeling approached to the study of people and the environment
Long Abstract
Ecological and environmental sciences have evolved in close relation with capitalism and colonialism (Grove, 1996; Lewontin and Levins, 2007; Liboiron, 2021; Tilley, 2011). Political ecologists have a long history of drawing knowledges of ecology, environment, and the politics of this knowledge into question (Butt and Turner, 2012; Blaikie, 1985; Goldman, 2007; Lave et al., 2014; Turner, 1993). This work has shown how scientific epistemologies can be reductive of how they consider scale, land use, livelihood systems, political boundaries, and ecosystem dynamics, and in doing so can provide empirical support to the interests of dominant actors (Fairhead and Leach, 1996; Davis, 2016). Given the proliferation of new types and amounts of data, together with both increased computational capacity and machine learning approaches, there is a need for increased scrutiny to track how statistical and geospatial modeling can become laden with values. These approaches can create a sense of unprecedented generality, rigor, and certainty, but can also mask and compound errors and uncertainties, and “misread” landscapes and livelihoods in new ways. The outputs of these analyses can have profound implications for local communities: they can support crisis narratives that override local decision-making processes, legitimize top-down planning, and justify forced exclusions and other more subtle configurations of access to land. Beyond understanding the implications of ecological data and analysis for extending power, there is also a need for alternative analyses that highlight relationships between people and non-human nature that dominant approaches obscure. Recent examples include Schell et al. (2020), Sze et al. (2022), and Xu and Butt (2024).
We welcome a range of contributions, including but not limited to:
- biodiversity threat mapping
- remote sensing and earth observation
- ecosystem dynamics and change
- landscape connectivity and corridors
- community and population ecology
- drivers of wildlife population dynamics
- climate change
Accepted papers
Presentation short abstract
This paper conceptualizes the ‘global glacier knowledge industry', a network of global institutions that control crucial geospatial data used in cryosphere research and its implications for cryosphere research in the Global South, particularly in the Indian Himalayan Region.
Presentation long abstract
This paper investigates the entanglement between knowledge politics and environmental governance using a critical political ecology approach. It uses this to analyse the question: How does the politics of knowledge generation and use on glaciers shape environmental governance in the cryosphere across the world? Governments rely on expert assessments to decipher the changes taking place within their glaciated territories. With increasing concerns of glacier melt and the degradation of the world’s frozen terrains, efforts to expand cryosphere research have intensified. Understanding glacier melt requires systematic and long-term observation, and thus, glacier monitoring activities have expanded over the last few decades. In the Global South, particularly in the Himalayan cryosphere, such research has been subject to intense scientific scrutiny and political debate over concerns surrounding data authenticity, methodological rigour, and epistemic exclusion. Using the case of the cryosphere community operating within the Indian Himalayan Region and its involvement with global institutions that order and control the use of crucial geospatial data used in cryosphere research, this study aims to investigate the interactions between the cryosphere community in India, the Indian government, and the global institutions. Methods employed include semi-structured interviews, observations, and analysis of scientific literature, policy documents, and government reports. The study argues that the growing reliance on remotely sensed glacier data, managed through a network of global institutions, conceptualised here as the global glacier knowledge industry, reproduces unequal epistemic and institutional structures organised around practices of monitoring glaciers, generating data, and translating data into meaningful policy-relevant climate science.
Presentation short abstract
An examination of eight major governmental afforestation schemes and programs using three remotely sensed datasets show varied impacts on tree cover in India. Without the combination of the three different datasets, we risk seeing an incomplete picture due to the limitations of datasets considered.
Presentation long abstract
Expanding tree cover outside forests is central to India’s climate and restoration goals, yet the effectiveness of public programs driving these efforts remains uncertain. We examined eight major government schemes aimed at promoting trees on farmlands and other non-forest lands, linking program funding (2013–2019) with observed tree cover change (2017–2023) across three complementary datasets: the Forest Survey of India (FSI), MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields, and the Brandt et al. (2024) high-resolution individual tree maps. Results reveal that world's first official agroforestry policy, the Sub-Mission on Agroforestry (SMAF), is consistently associated with gains in tree cover on agricultural lands. However, several other large programs—including those for afforestation, agricultural development, and compensatory planting—show weak or negative relationships with tree cover outside forests. These patterns suggest that program design and targeting, rather than funding volume alone, determine success. Our findings underscore policy priorities such as better alignment of agricultural and forestry incentives to support on-farm trees, improved transparency in program implementation and monitoring, and greater public access to fine-scale expenditure data to enable evaluation of outcomes. Furthermore, our study reveals the limitations of using only a single remotely sensed dataset to understand the impact of policies, which a combination of datasets reveals in different social contexts and spatial scales. As India and other countries expand tree-planting investments under climate and biodiversity commitments, evidence from this study highlights the need to move from funding inputs to verifying outcomes, ensuring that tree-based interventions contribute effectively to both ecological restoration and rural livelihoods.
Presentation short abstract
Presumed increases in carbon sequestration have driven afforestation investments in drylands like the Sahel, excluding residents from needed resources. Using growth and survivorship data of vegetation in savannas and tree plantations, these increases are shown to be significantly overestimated.
Presentation long abstract
In Africa's drylands, despite the limited benefits and real costs of afforestation to rural residents, programs of mass afforestation, such as the Great Green Wall in the Sahel, are popular with donors from the Global North. A major motivator is the presumed carbon sequestration benefits of tree planting on what are seen as empty and denuded landscapes. The core scientific premise of these efforts is that tree planting significantly increases terrestrial carbon stocks in drylands since trees store carbon over a number of years and herbaceoous vegetation does not. In reality, both types of vegetation are ephemeral in drylands with trees being less ephemeral but slower growing. We empirically evaluate this premise by estimating the relative importance the carbon stored in herbaceous and lignaceous vegetation at rangeland sites and in plantations of Senegalia senegal (Acacia senegal), the most favored plantation tree in the region. These estimates are generated through the development of quantitative relationships of survivorship and growth, as affected by mean rainfall and edaphic condition. Treating terrestrial carbon stores in vegetation as not as a static stock but integrated across time (tons of carbon months), the replacement of a savanna/steppe ecological community with a tree plantation, not only has biodiversity and social justice implications but may result in much lower increases in (integrated) carbon storage than assumed. The results call into question the large investments funding treed exclosures across the region and illustrate the strong role played by national forestry services in their promotion.
Presentation short abstract
What does it mean to be a “good” Arctic scientist in times of climate change? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from one of the most productive research stations on the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, I explore how “good” scientific practices form under the shadow of the climate crisis.
Presentation long abstract
Environmental science is relied upon to produce representations of environmental futures to inform global climate targets. I explore how, as the relationship between environmental predictions and governance proves uncertain and scientists develop relationships with the places they study, environmental scientists question and find meaning in their work.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from one of the most productive research stations on the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, the Abisko Scientific Research Station in northernmost Sweden, I ask: What are understandings of what it means to be a “good Arctic scientist” in times of climate change?
Through participant observation during field campaigns alongside interviews, I show how “good” scientific practices change under the shadow of the climate crisis. The scientists revealed these dimensions of their practices by sharing moments of moral ambivalence, feelings of responsibility to Abisko as a place and the Sámi communities whose land they work on, opinions on structural failures in academia and climate governance, challenges they have navigating and communicating uncertainty, and the reasons they continue or fail to be motivated by the project of environmental science. Fundamentally, the omnipresence of climate change in the work of Arctic scientists raises ethical questions, which scientists must orient themselves around, ultimately shaping their practices.
By foregrounding scientists’ doubts, ethical deliberations, and efforts to make their work meaningful, this paper repositions environmental science not as a placeless, detached project of understanding and predicting Arctic worlds but as a deeply human practice embedded in environmentally and socially dynamic Arctic worlds.
Presentation short abstract
We studied the computer models underlying Dutch flood risk management and observed that the growing complexity of the modelling ecosystem leads to fragmented expertise, reduced agency, and questions about (democratic) accountability for decisions based on computer models.
Presentation long abstract
In the Netherlands, a low-lying delta country, models underpin legally binding flood safety strategies and are, in this way, structurally involved in anticipatory governance. Over time, the ecosystem of models employed to manage flood safety has grown both in number and in detail. Based on interviews with modellers and decision makers involved with flood risk modelling for the Netherlands, it appears there is little overview of the whole chain of models necessary both to determine dike safety standards as well as models necessary to redesign dikes to meet these standards. We move from Millgram’s Endarkenment thesis, which argues that Enlightenment’s push toward reason and specialization has backfired, leaving individuals overwhelmed by fragmented expertise. In contexts of fragmented expertise, trust becomes indispensable: if one cannot judge a model’s appropriateness, one must defer to another’s judgment. Yet this dependence on another’s judgement has direct consequences for agency and accountability, which becomes diluted between those making the decision and those whose expertise must be trusted. We complement this analysis with Illich’s Tools for Conviviality, showing how technology can expropriate agency and eventually becomes manipulative: when tools become too complex to be questioned, they begin to shape decisions more than the people using them. Taken together, we question the democratic basis of model-based governance.
Presentation short abstract
Research shows that global wildfire activity is declining due to a reduction in savanna fires. The study critiques the neutrality of massive satellite data usage and demonstrates its connection to inherited colonial policies in West Africa.
Presentation long abstract
Research indicates that, contrary to common perceptions, wildfire activity is declining globally, primarily due to reduced fire activity in savannas. This finding exposes the normative view of fire as hazard and the neutrality of using satellite data for assessing fire regimes, as these overshadow local contexts, histories and politics that shape them. The evolution of the fire regime concept reflects historical ambiguities in fire science and policy in colonial contexts. Today, fire research is influenced by carbon market considerations and informed by global fire datasets. This paper critically examines whether modern satellite data usage moves away from colonial legacies in fire management, particularly in West Africa. It highlights the complexities of fire regime changes, arguing that current policies oversimplify fire into a "good/bad" dichotomy. The authors propose a framework to document diverse local fire trajectories influenced by factors like demographic shifts, land cover changes and biogeography. Through sequence analysis, nine distinct fire trajectories are identified, revealing that while global fire activity in savannas is decreasing, many regions remain stable in terms of fire intensity and seasonality. These insights encourage a reevaluation of fire management strategies in West Africa, moving beyond simplistic classifications to better reflect the diversity of local realities.
Presentation short abstract
Open data became an environmental management solution. But data misuse and misinterpretation can reinforce surveillance, extraction and conflict with subaltern groups. We examine the role of non-humans and data access/storage restriction across collaboration between indigenous groups and scientists.
Presentation long abstract
To what extent can remote sensing technology and data infrastructures reorganize and recontextualize environmental conflicts and subjects anew? We are witnessing a push by governments, industry sectors and scientific fields towards the mandate for free data streams, open access, and transparency. The open data mandate has become prominent in land use and environmental management and politics, where more information is conflated with efficient solutions. However, digital data can also generate new conflicts, and paradoxically reinforce logics of appropriation, extraction, and enclosure. Indigenous, peasant, and subaltern groups increasingly point to possible negative consequences of sharing and opening access to data generated about their culture, livelihoods and territoriality. Among other things, data integration and analysis methods can lead to data misinterpretation and illicit political misuse. In this paper, we bring political ecology approaches on environmental conflicts and commons together with Science and Technology Studies (STS) work on digital infrastructures and critical data studies to analyze precision monitoring and data production of lichen cover deployed by ecology scientists working with Sami herders in Sweden since the early 2000’s, as a mediation in the ongoing conflict between reindeer pastoralism and forestry. Based on ethnographic collaboration with ecology scientists, we enquire the role of non-humans (lichen, pinus plantation, reindeer) and the material limitations to storage and access designed in the data infrastructure to explore how data production and interpretations can be contested, and how these matters for future reindeer herding.
Presentation short abstract
This presentation examines how digital platforms in Chilean biodiversity conservation reconfigure governance, embedding neoliberal and biopolitical logics that marginalize local knowledges and reshape human–nature relations.
Presentation long abstract
Over recent decades, biodiversity conservation has undergone a profound digital transformation through platforms and AI-based technologies. Far from being neutral tools, these tecnologies reconfigure how nature is observed, understood, and governed. Drawing on emerging debates in political ecology, digital ecologies and STS, this presentation analyzes the case of Chile’s Fotomonitoreo platform, a state-led photomonitoring system designed to track animal presence in national parks, to explore how algorithmic conservation mediates governance. While presented as enhancing efficiency and precision, these technologies consolidate technocratic regimes that privilege computational rationalities over situated knowledges, reinforcing exclusions, surveillance practices, and introducing new forms of animal confinement as biopolitical digital strategies. Such dynamics align with neoliberal biopolitics, instrumentalizing conservation as a mechanism for capital accumulation and legitimizing territorial reconfigurations that prioritize ecotouristic value over ecological justice. By situating this analysis within Latin America - where research on digital conservation remains scarce - this work interrogates how ecological data and algorithmic modeling become laden with values, producing new territorialities and crisis narratives that override local decision-making. In doing so, it connects to the panel’s critical focus on the colonial and capitalist entanglements of ecological science, highlighting the need for alternative approaches that foreground relational and plural ecologies obscured by dominant digital infrastructures.
Presentation short abstract
Why do Swedish forest owners with diverse objectives practice homogeneous management? I argue that digital planning tools, GPS systems, and administrative standards, co-evolved over decades, afford clear-cutting while systematically constraining continuous-cover alternatives.
Presentation long abstract
Research on Swedish forestry reveals a puzzle. Private forest owners hold diverse objectives: some prioritize timber production, others biodiversity, recreation, or climate. Many report balancing property rights with stewardship ideals. Yet practiced management remains overwhelmingly homogeneous, focusing on even-aged rotational forestry with devastating impacts on biodiversity and also climate. Why is that?
Existing explanations emphasize discourse and market-level factors. I descend instead into material practices. Drawing on affordance theory and the concept of boundary objects, I argue that physical, digital, and administrative infrastructures, imbricated through decades of co-evolution, enable effortless coordination for clear-cutting while adding friction to alternatives.
Infrastructures become visible when they break down. Through interviews with private owners, contractors, and forest advisors, I examine what happens when actors attempt continuous-cover forestry. Work registration software validates distances between strip roads as 18–22 meters. Harvester GPS sits in the cabin, not the arm tip, preventing precise documentation of selective cutting. Planning software assumes even-aged stands, making CCF interventions impossible to register. Contractors lack both equipment and competence; cooperatives offer standardized clear-cutting advice.
This contributes to critical engagements with ecological data infrastructures. Those infrastructures exist already today, often as crude representations only. The specifications, standards, and software coordinating forest supply chains appear neutral but embed assumptions systematically favoring dominant practices. They constrain not by misreading landscapes but by rendering alternatives illegible: impossible to plan, document, and coordinate. Recognizing these material constraints is essential for understanding regime stability and identifying where transitions might gain traction.
Presentation short abstract
This paper critiques the colonial surveillance system to study neglected tropical diseases, such as rabies in India and examine the drawback of scientific methods in estimating the real burden on vulnerable communities through triangulation of joint-point regression, temporal trends and policy gaps.
Presentation long abstract
The Identification of rabies as a neglected tropical disease came through colonial medicine. Similarly, the surveillance system for detecting rabies and the discourse rely on positivist ontologies that count institutionally reported deaths, laboratory-confirmed cases and narratives constructed around developed regions. The ecological models and algorithms in place neglect free-roaming dogs and their fit into multi-species spaces, leading to 9.1 million animal bites every year, surfacing towards an epidemiological risk.
This paper addresses such epistemic gaps through the one-health approach and the triangulation of joint-point regression on GBD Data from 1990 to 2021, engaging local knowledge systems and multi-species landscapes. It highlights the implementation gaps of positivist methodologies in terms of policies that do not address the gendered prevalence of disease and age-wise risk groups, which was exhibited from the results. Furthermore, gender hegemony and age disparity were also observed in all four indicators and economic metrics. Thus, this paper proposes an Intervention between the epistemologies of public health and ecology, reshaping the identity of dogs more than free-roaming or rabies vectors.
It captures the systematic underestimation of deaths due to rabies, which varies region-wise. The work draws upon political ecology and proposes multi-sectoral collaboration between different actors(including dogs) for reforming people's knowledge and behaviour towards the disease and species,and reducing under-reporting of cases through awareness and vaccination. It suggests community participation, social media campaigns and including poor communities who have the least access to post-exposure prophylaxis. Thus, it proposes the narrative of decolonising the rabies ecology in India.
Presentation short abstract
The IUCN Red List is considered one of the most comprehensive and objective sources of global biodiversity information. This presentation explores the uncertainties that underpin Red List assessments, how they vary across taxa and regions, and what this means for conservation research and practice.
Presentation long abstract
With over 172,000 species assessed, the IUCN Red List is widely considered to be the most comprehensive, robust and objective source of information on globally threatened animal, fungus and plant species. It underpins several influential global conservation initiatives, is an important input into a number of key biodiversity metrics and is one of the most common data layers used in global priority mapping exercises. However, despite its status and the apparent precision implied by the elegantly coloured maps and figures, the Red List is still affected by considerable uncertainties (Lovari 2020). For example, our knowledge of global biodiversity status and trends is still beset by significant shortfalls (Hortal et al. 2015) and although the quantitative criteria emphasise objectivity, the subjective judgement of individual experts continues to play a key role in shaping parameter estimates and assessment outcomes (Regan et al. 2005). Drawing on an exploration of existing trends and patterns in the Red List data and interviews with assessors, this presentation explores what types of uncertainty impact Red List assessments, how they vary across groups and regions and the extent to which these uncertainties are made visible to potential users of the Red List. I ask what the Red List knows, how it knows it, and what is at stake when the uncertainties in our knowledge are obscured.
Presentation short abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between biodiversity credit methodologies and different strand of Ecology through an empirical examination of two contrasting cases: one focused on the restoration of degraded ecosystems, the other on the conservation of tropical forests.
Presentation long abstract
New biodiversity credits schemes are regularly announced; most of them labelled as ‘science-based’ and ‘high-integrity’. While these developments could be analyzed as an experiment in market-making, this contribution focuses on the ecological dimension of biodiversity credits methodologies – attending to how ecologists engage with their design and to the forms of knowledge enrolled. Ecology comprises multiple strands, methodologies, sensibilities, and the idea of biodiversity itself not to be taken for granted (Takacs 1996).
Building on the Science & Technology Studies (STS) concept of calculative devices (Callon 2007), the paper examines what kind of nature is accounted for in different methodologies before discussing the socio-ecological implications are associated with these differences. This focus enables examination of the ways in which different forms of knowledge and scientific references are used to construct these methodologies and to give them legitimacy, but also analysis of the different versions of nature that they embed/
Methodologically, the research draws on multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1995) and combines data from participant observation, document-analysis and interviews with ecologists. The comparison between two distinctive credits schemes, respectively focused on conservation and restoration, illustrates how these calculative devices embed different socio-natures – reflexively designed to perform in the service of specific forms of environmentalization.