Geography and environmental governance I: Governing with environmental data

Abstract

New data technologies abound in environmental politics. It is promised that these technologies will makethe task of managing human impacts on the environment faster, easier, and more rational. Geographershave been among those eyeing this turn critically, illuminating how new data technologies are performingnew environmental entities and scales of equivalence that become subject to political attention and dis-pute. The pulling of data through centralised infrastructure then adds layers of social judgement, asdata are cleaned, formatted, and categorised to support the aims of the infrastructure’s owners and man-agers. Throughout this process, the political economy of measurement – the idea that more measurementis a necessary precondition for more effective environmental decision making – acquires hegemony as pol-itical actors organise themselves around the politics of data and its control. With the environmental dataturn reorganising the bases of environmental governance, geographical work is illuminating what is at stakeand how these shifts can be engaged politically