Concerns about poaching and trafficking have led conservationists to seek urgent responses to tackle the impact on wildlife. One possible solution is the militarisation of conservation, which holds potentially far-reaching consequences. It is important to engage critically with the militarisation of conservation, including identifying and reflecting on the problems it produces for wildlife, for people living with wildlife and for those tasked with implementing militarised strategies. This Perspectives piece is a first step towards synthesising the main themes in emerging critiques of militarised conservation. We identify five major themes: first, the importance of understanding how poaching is defined; second, understanding the ways that local communities experience militarised conservation; third, the experiences of rangers; fourth, how the militarisation of conservation can contribute to violence where conservation operates in the context of armed conflict; and finally how it fits in with and reflects wider political economic dynamics. Ultimately, we suggest that failure to engage more critically with militarisation risks making things worse for the people involved and lead to poor conservation outcomes in the long run.

Wildlife conservation and research benefits enormously from automated and interconnected monitoring tools. Some of these tools, such as drones, remote cameras, and social media, can collect data on humans, either accidentally or deliberately. They can therefore be thought of as conservation surveillance technologies (CSTs). There is increasing evidence that CSTs, and the data they yield, can have both positive and negative impacts on people, raising ethical questions about how to use them responsibly. CST use may accelerate because of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding urgency to addressing these ethical challenges. We propose a provisional set of principles for the responsible use of such tools and their data: (a) recognize and acknowledge CSTs can have social impacts; (b) deploy CSTs based on necessity and proportionality relative to the conservation problem; (c) evaluate all potential impacts of CSTs on people; (d) engage with and seek consent from people who may be observed and/or affected by CSTs; (e) build transparency and accountability into CST use; (f) respect peoples' rights and vulnerabilities; and (g) protect data in order to safeguard privacy.These principles require testing and could conceivably benefit conservation efforts, especially through inclusion of people likely to be affected by CSTs.

In recent years, a range of new and existing monitoring technologies have been developed or redeployed for the practice of conservation. These include the use of drones, camera traps, and satellite and thermal imagery for activities such as anti-poaching and law enforcement. These technologies bring exciting new technical capabilities for conservation, but they also raise social concerns related to privacy and pervasive surveillance. Without proper consultation and dialogue with local communities, it has been suggested that the use of such technologies may lead to marginalization, interstakeholder tensions, and ultimately strain the relationship between conservation agencies, local communities, and even local authorities. In many respects surveillance is constitutive of modern society, especially in urban spaces. The social implications of surveillance have been heavily researched and discussed in that context, but the application of surveillance technologies in conservation and environmental management and its impacts remain an underexplored field of inquiry. This chapter aims to explore and understand the complexities that lie behind using surveillance technologies for conservation. It argues that these digital technologies are not a panacea for all conservation-related problems and need careful review before, during, and after use. The chapter also argues that it is important to consider who controls, benefits from, and pays for these technologies. Finally, the chapter calls for comprehensive ethical guidelines and frameworks of regulation that promote democratization of these technologies.

Forests are increasingly central to policies and initiatives to address global environmental change. Digital technologies have become crucial components of these projects as the tools and systems that would monitor and manage forests for storing carbon, preserving biodiversity, and providing ecosystem services. Historically, technologies have been instrumental in forming forests as spaces of conservation, extraction, and inhabitation. Digital technologies build on previous techniques of forest management, which have been shaped by colonial governance, expert science, and economic growth. However, digital technologies for achieving environmental initiatives can also extend, transform, and disrupt these sedimented practices. This article asks how the convergence of forests and digital technologies gives rise to different socio-technical formations and modalities of “political forests.” Through an analysis of five digital operations, including 1) observation, 2) datafication, 3) participation, 4) automation, and 5) regulation and transformation, we investigate how the co-constitution of forests, technologies, subjects, and social life creates distinct materializations of politics–and cosmopolitics. By building on and expanding the concept of cosmopolitics, we query how the political is designated through digital forest projects and how it might be reworked to generate less extractive environmental practices and relations while contributing to more just and pluralistic forest worlds.

No abstract