Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Jennifer Devine, Texas State University

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Description:

The proliferation of (geo)spatial technologies has significantly influenced the methods, policies, and politics of biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration, and ‘nature-based solutions’ approaches to climate change. Satellite data and technology-mediated field observation have long contributed to biodiversity conservation research and related initiatives; however, the increasing accessibility of many of these technologies and associated data, higher resolution and frequency of data capture, and enhanced processing and data storage capacity have progressively shifted conservation practice toward a full embrace of spatial technologies. Geographers have expressed concern over the implications of the use of such technologies for people in conservation landscapes, as global-scale initiatives target certain landscapes for conservation and protection without regard for community presence and land use, and militarized surveillance of protected areas become ever more reliant on spatial technologies. At the same time, emerging techno-scientific approaches ‘from below’ have arisen as different interest groups gain access to such technologies and use them in unexpected ways. Indigenous and forest community groups, for example, are using drones and mapping applications to collect and/or produce their own data and maps capturing landscape features and change. These practices may challenge more exclusionary conservation and restoration narratives and create space for constructing justice-based approaches; alternately, they may reinforce the status quo and reinforce conventional understandings of conservation expertise. With these disparate possibilities in mind, this set of sessions convenes critical research on the role of (geo)spatial technologies in underpinning, mediating, and resisting conservation and restoration practice.

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda