Presentation short abstract

Participatory monitoring is promoted in community-based conservation as an inclusive way to generate environmental information from the ground up. Yet the increasing use of surveillance technologies like camera traps risks turning monitoring into enforcement and reshaping local power relations.

Presentation long abstract

Participatory monitoring is promoted in community-based conservation as an inclusive way to generate environmental information from the ground up. Yet in Ghana’s Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs), monitoring is often enacted less as knowledge generation and more as surveillance and enforcement. Emergent technologies such as camera traps, GPS devices and digital data systems intensify this shift, creating new forms of authority, deterrence and disciplinary power.

Monitoring teams occupy a hybrid position between community member and ranger, authorised to observe, report and sanction peers. Surveillance technologies strengthen this position not only through technical capacity but through affective effects: rumours, anticipation of being watched and fear of punishment shape behaviour even in the absence of direct observation. Monitoring in CBC produces environmental subjects not primarily through stewardship or participation, but through sovereign modes of environmentality rooted in deterrence and control.

These dynamics are embedded in broader histories of conservation in Ghana, where forests have long been managed through policing. Emergent technologies risk presenting enforcement as neutral data collection, reproducing exclusionary governance logics in ostensibly participatory contexts. A focus on surveillance shows that technologies do not simply monitor environments but actively reconfigure governance, embedding enforcement logics within community relations and conservation practice.