Theorizing environmental data equity in conservation and resource management.

Keywords: environmental justice, data justice, data equity, conservation technology, surveillance
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 44

Abstract

Environmental justice (EJ) is a movement and body of scholarship that examines the disproportionate burden of environmental risks and harms experienced by people of color, those in poverty or otherwise marginalized. Although EJ began with a focus on the environmental impacts of industrial development (e.g. soil, air and water pollution), more recently activists and scholars have turned their attention to conservation, asking who gets to participate in conservation decision-making, whose interests are represented in the process, and who ultimately benefits or loses from conservation efforts. Data justice is similarly concerned with the distribution of benefits and burdens of data, and manifestations of injustice through its collection, interpretation and application in the world. Developing equitable data practices means examining how axis of social difference shape one’s engagement with data: whose data is collected, who can access data and how, how is data used and by whom, and who is allowed to participate in data governance decisions. Despite the central role of geospatial data and technology in environmental monitoring and management, there have been few attempts to explicitly link EJ and data justice, particularly in the context of conservation and resource management. To address this gap, this talk theorizes environmental data equity conservation practice. I do so by tracing the genealogy of geospatial technology in resource management and the current moment of environmental datafication. I consider the possibilities and limitations of environmental data equity when technology and data are embedded in political economies of environmental extraction and commodification of environmental services.