Presentation short abstract

How do satellite-based remote sensing capacities afford the state the possibility for environmental performativity without undertaking substantive, and often economically hurtful, actions needed to solve problems and how the state, in turn, reconfigures technologies for these everyday performances?

Presentation long abstract

State uses of spatial technologies are often a strategy to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of environmental policies, though as critical scholars argue, such technologies can reduce and oversimplify socio-ecological complexities. As environmental challenges continue to worsen and states negotiate their role in balancing contrasting environmental and developmental agendas, it is useful to ask how and in what ways states turn to spatial technologies to perform governance. Combining literature in environmental governance and science and technology studies, we ask how, and in what ways, spatial technologies afford the state the possibility for environmental performativity without undertaking substantive, and often economically hurtful, actions needed to solve problems and how the state, in turn, reconfigures technologies for these everyday performances.

We focus on Indian forest governance, particularly the history of Forest Survey of India (FSI) in developing and using satellite-based remote sensing capacities for forest measurement, to answer these questions. Using key informant interviews and archival and documentary research, we look into the FSI and the State of Forest Report it publishes biennially. We analyze how decisions around methodologies were made, how different stakeholders engaged these decisions, and how decisions were shaped by domestic and international negotiations. In examining this interaction of technology and the performative environmental state, we base our analysis on three interacting factors –a) domestic political economic pressures, manifested through developmental politics, judicial activism, or social movements, b) international politics of climate change, and c) the evolution of remote sensing capabilities of the Indian state.