Spatial Technologies and Landscape Claims: Imag(in)ing Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve

Keywords: geospatial data, deforestation, environmental justice, Guatemala
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

Images of the Earth’s surface are ever more accessible at finer resolutions, with greater frequency, and from more diverse sources. Geospatial data and technologies have gone from the provenance of government agencies and university labs to being available to private citizens anywhere. Now, different interest groups can use satellite-based and near-earth remote sensing to collect and/or produce their own data and maps capturing landscape features and change. The increasing accessibility of spatial data and data collection technologies allow for user groups historically seen as non-expert in the context of conservation – Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples and forest-adjacent communities in particular – to produce their own geospatial products and make techno-scientific appeals to governments, donors, and the public. In some cases, especially related to sites prized for biodiversity conservation and perceived as under threat from deforestation, different interest groups may produce maps of the same spatial extent – and sometimes using the same underlying data – to make divergent claims as to the nature, degree, and urgency of threats. Far from objective representations of reality, these data and spatial representations signify different imaginaries of what is and could be in a given landscape, as well as who and what belong in it. Drawing on evidence from the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala, this article demonstrates how the ubiquity of geospatial data and data collection modes provide new possibilities for forest communities to advance their imaginaries, but also new frontiers for contestation over what – and whose – knowledge counts.