Conservation Data Justice

Project Information

CONDJUST

Grant agreement ID: 101054259

DOI

10.3030/101054259

EC signature date 18 July 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2027

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 491 924,00

EU contribution

€ 2 491 924,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CONDJUST (Conservation Data Justice)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2025-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

CONDJUST will create a new research field, Conservation Data Justice, that bridges three distinct areas of enquiry: conservation prioritisation, political ecology and data justice. The former uses multiple data layers to build models that can help us to work out where scarce conservation resources might best be allocated to yield the greatest return. However many of these layers contain systematic errors or bias which risk marginalising rural peoples. Political ecology is highly aware of the risks that conservation policies can pose, but it does not yet examine conservation data or data justice questions when analysing conservation prioritisation. Data justice scholars have undertaken a great deal of work on environmental data justice issues, but have only begun to consider conservation issues.

CONDJUST will interrogate conservation data and models, and explore the epistemic communities producing them, to develop new theories of socially just, data-driven conservation. It will challenge the colonising tendencies of prioritisation work and seek decolonising alternatives.

CONDJUST is timely because ambitious new global targets seek to safeguard 30% of the planet for conservation by 2030 (and more afterwards). Effective conservation can be beneficial for numerous interest groups. At the same time plans like '30 by 30’ can present risks for rural people because it is provoking a flurry of prioritisation initiatives. The data and modelling these use can contain diverse forms of bias, exclusion and omission. We need insights from Data Justice to understand these dangers, and how they might be counter-acted.

This project has four objectives, each with a corresponding work package. These are:
1. Systematically examine the sources of bias and distortion in conservation data used in global prioritisation work. This will entail both examining the origins and construction of data layers, and taking these layers on their terms to explore what insights they afford when compared.
2. Use data justice thinking in new analyses of biodiversity conservation and increase our understanding of socially just conservation prioritisation. This entails theoretical work exploring the underpinnings of conservation data justice as well as our understanding of the scales and circumstances in which prioritisation can produce locally welcome scenarios.
3. Critically explore the construction of different epistemic communities in conservation prioritisation, political ecology and data justice to understand what inhibits and enhances learning between them. This aspect is vital better to proceed beyond current disciplinary divisions.
4. Examine how policies responding to prioritisation are shaped by, or resist, the new measures proposed. This is particularly important to understand how data injustices can travel internationally and to get to grips with the consequences of prioritisation plans.

These work packages will be pursued by an interdisciplinary team led by the PI and composed of post-doctoral researchers, PhDs and an advisory board.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

I report our work and achievements against the four work packages. This work and recent developments can be found on the project website: www.condjust.eu.

WP1: tackling the empirical challenges of understanding how omission, bias and oversight can be built into the data and modelling used in conservation prioritisation.
We have begun work on the following with the appointment of three post-doctoral researchers in the autumn of 2023: Agricultural modelling and specifically models which consider how global food demands might be met by intensifying agriculture on a reduced land footprint. We have undertaken a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles on global conservation priorities, examining their use of data layers and trends over time in global priorities for conservation. We are focussing specifically on several layers which are commonly found in many prioritisation papers: the human footprint, data on pastoralism, the Indigenous Peoples’ land layer and ecoregions. In addition, we are exploring the different geospatial data layers and analyses commonly used to prioritize restoration and conservation in pastoralist lands in East Africa. Part of this work involves collaborations particularly with a SNAPP funded project that examines the social implications of 30 by 30.

WP2: addressing the theoretical challenges of combining theories of Data Justice into political ecological critiques of conservation.
The post-doctoral researcher appointed to this work package began in April 2024.. He is mainly working in Ladakh, in Kashmir, exploring how new technologies open or close down spaces for local knowledges in the context of pastoralism. Further theoretical work is being undertaken by three PhD students, on decolonisation of conservation, different theories of justice, bridging the writings of Nancy Fraser and Miranda Fricka, and uncertainty.

WP3: examines how epistemic communities within conservation prioritisation are built, maintained and how they can learn, or fail, to learn from each other.
The post-doctoral researcher appointed to this work package began in April 2024. Using social network analysis we have completed a study of the epistemic communities writing on neoliberal conservation. The post-doc has now begun an analysis of the epistemic communities involved in conservation planning in the Namaqualand Succulent Karoo in South Africa.

WP4: tracing the policy influence, or lack of influence, of conservation prioritisation work.
Three PhD appointments (since autumn 2023), and one PhD project affiliated to the project, have been working on different aspects of policy change and the movement of ideas. These include work on conservation prioritisation in Peru and the ways in which it can perpetuate, or challenge, colonised conservation practices. Two projects in Colombia exploring the role of OECMs in fulfilling conservation prioritisation commitments. The final project is examining the uncertainty and the IUCN Red List. An additional project working on block chain is in process of formally joining.

Across all work packages a key development has been the building of new and productive collaborations. These include:
- exchanges with another ERC funded project (SYSTEMSHIFT),
- with researchers and activists working on conservation on Indigenous Peoples Lands (resulting in a Comment in Nature on the problems with the 80% figure),
- with researchers working on the SNAPP project exploring the social implications of 30 by 30 (resulting in a correspondence piece in Nature Ecology and Evolution).
- a bespoke symposium held in May 2024 near Girona in which over 30 invited researchers presented 20 pre-circulated papers. We are preparing a collective paper as a result of our endeavours.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our work is at too early a stage to be considered significant breakthroughs that go beyond the state-of-the-art. We are still collecting the data that will allow us to mount the comprehensive critiques of current practices and commonly used data-layers. We are also still building the alliances and collaborations needed to do this well. However we are making progress on new understandings of the Human Footprint, pastoralism data, agricultural modelling, ecoregions, redlist indices and the indigenous peoples land layer.

Symposium participants