Search

Governments use metrics made possible by new data technologies to allocate budgets, manage pandemics, valorize ecosystems, and demonstrate how these actions are legitimate. Big data is pointed to as providing objective answers that emerge untampered from observations of the world as it is – a view from nowhere. While data is more valued than ever in environmental governance, so too are arrangements that seek stakeholders' input and otherwise address their subjective interests – a view from everywhere. Different kinds of metrics perform state actors as accountable in both registers: metrics that are responsive to dynamic conditions; that account for specific stakeholders; that can be prioritized against one another in interactive data visualization tools. Louisiana, USA's Coastal Master Plan is an attempt to stem wetlands loss through fine-scale modeling of large volumes of data and calculation of these kinds of social and environmental metrics. State actors there make accountability claims that appear contradictory: their decisions are legitimate because they are driven by the best available coastal science and technology, while their data tools 'didn't make decisions for us.' As state actors deploy environmental big data and metrics to make sense of it, we should be able to explain these apparently contradictory stances and the controversies that result. STS theory on metrics in environmental governance benefits from characterizing how 'modes of authorized seeing' are given expression by different metrical forms and what brings modes into contact and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those concerned with climate governance will want to keep watching what is happening in AI governance. Far from unrelated, the two parallel one another in terms of how fractions of capital—whether within fossil fuel or tech sectors—call for legislating in the face of crisis or for voluntary pledges. In truth, both may be said to be forms of self‐governance. Climate and AI intersect firstly in how they are imagined: dominant climate and AI discourses are both symptoms of Anthropocene thinking and 'capitalist realism'. They also intersect in as much as 'AI for Good' initiatives propose that AI is ethical because it can help to address climate change. What seems missing, however, is any consideration of this climate AI as a procedure—is its knowledge valid, what knowledges does it displace or exclude, what biases are reproduced?—and consideration for its consequences, including harms. Does it actually result in climate mitigation and/or adaptation in a given context? What 'maladaptive' outcomes might it drive? What alternatives does it foreclose? These sorts of questions are ones where geographers will continue to have a lot to say. Those concerned with climate governance will want to keep watching what is happening in AI governance. Far from unrelated, the two parallel one another in terms of how fractions of capital—whether within fossil fuel or tech sectors—call for legislating in the face of crisis or for voluntary pledges. They also intersect in as much as 'AI for Good' initiatives propose that AI is ethical because it can help to address climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number and variety of technologies used for environmental surveillance is expanding rapidly, making constant data collection and near 'real time' analyses possible. 'Smart Earth' describes networked infrastructures comprised of devices and equipment and signals to the human dimensions inherent to developing, deploying and putting technology and large datasets to use. In this paper, we situate Smart Earth in terms of technological products and human practices and consider the relationship between Smart Earth and global environmental governance. Specifically, we review emerging literature and present a case study of an organization founded by environmental non-profit, SkyTruth, tech industry behemoth, Google and marine conservation NGO, Oceana. Called 'Global Fishing Watch' (GFW), this organization builds geospatial datasets, hosts an online mapping platform where anyone with internet access can surveil various types of ocean-going vessels and shares data and map products with scientists and practitioners. Two critical points emerge through the case. First, we show that GFW expands its surveillance capacity by pursuing 'data sharing' partnerships with sovereign states, many in the Global South. Second, the maps and datasets produced by GFW link vessels to a 'flag state' while the firms, subsidiaries and financiers that may own and/or operate these vessels remain obscure – and hence so too does the political economy of oceans fisheries. GFW maps and datasets offer new approaches to tracking fishing and are advancing fisheries science. At the same time, they rely on and are only legible through hegemonic geopolitical and political–economic orders deeply implicated in industrial (over)fishing. The norms and domains of global environmental governance are expanding, but Smart Earth 'solutions' risk leaving the structural drivers of environmental change unaddressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism Geographies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Conservationists, governments, and corporations see promise in digital technologies to provide holistic, rapid, and objective information to inform policy, shape investments, and monitor ecosystems. But it is increasingly clear that environmental data does more than simply offer a better view of the planet. This special issue makes a single overarching argument: that we cannot fully understand the current conjuncture in global environmental governance without understanding the platforms, devices, and institutions that comprise environmental data infrastructures. The papers draw together scholarship from political ecology and science and technology studies to demonstrate how data has become a significant site in which contemporary environmental politics are waged and socionatures are materialized. We address: (1) the contested practices of utilizing and maintaining data infrastructures; (2) the ways they are governed and the territorial statecraft they enable; (3) the socionatural materiality they arise within but also produce. The papers in this special issue show that, against its dominant representation, data is material, governed, practiced, and requires praxis. Political ecologists could adopt such an approach to make sense of the emerging ways in which data technologies shape environments and their politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservationists around the world advocate for "data-driven" environmental governance, expecting data infrastructures to make all relevant and actionable information readily available. But how exactly is data to be infrastructured and to what political effect? I show how putting together and maintaining environmental data for decision-making is not a straightforward technical task, but a practice shaped by and shaping politico-economic context. Drawing from the US state of Louisiana's coastal restoration planning process, I detail two ways ecosystem modelers manage fiscal and institutional "frictions" to "infrastructuring" data as a resource for decision-making. First, these experts work with the data they have. They leverage, tweak, and maintain existing datasets and tools, spending time and money to gather additional data only to the extent it fits existing goals. The assumption is that these goals will continue to be important, but building coastal data infrastructure around current research needs, plans, and austerity arguably limits what can be said in and done with the future. Second, modelers acquire the data they made to need. Coastal communities have protested the state's primary restoration tool: diversions of sediment from the Mississippi River. Planners reacted by relaxing institutional constraints and modelers brought together new data to highlight possible winners and losers from ecological restoration. Fishers and other coastal residents leveraged greater dissent in the planning process. Political ecologists show that technocentric environmental governance tends to foreclose dissent from hegemonic socioecological futures. I argue we can clarify the conditions in which this tends to happen by following how experts manage data frictions. As some conservationists and planners double down on driving with data in a "post-truth" world, I find that data's politicizing effects stem from what is asked of it, not whether it is "big" or "drives." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Websites have become the primary means by which the US federal government communicates about its operations and presents information for public consumption. However, the alteration or removal of critical information from these sites is often entirely legal and done without the public's awareness. Relative to paper records, websites enable governments to shape public understanding in quick, scalable, and permissible ways. During the Trump administration, website changes indicative of climate denial prompted civil society organizations to develop tools for tracking online government information sources. We in the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) illustrate how five data visualization techniques can be used to document and analyze changes to government websites. We examine a large sample of websites of US federal environmental agencies and show that between 2016 and 2020: 1) the use of the term "climate change" decreased by an estimated 38%; 2) access to as much as 20% of the Environmental Protection Agency's website was removed; 3) changes were made more to Cabinet agencies' websites and to highly visible pages. In formulating ways to visualize and assess the alteration of websites, our study lays important groundwork for both systematically tracking changes and holding officials more accountable for their web practices. Our techniques enable researchers and watchdog groups alike to operate at the scale necessary to understand the breadth of impact an administration can have on the online face of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]