Project description DEENESFRITPL Studying smart forests’ social-political impacts Digital technologies such as smart forests are developing as important strategies for addressing environmental change. Smart forests aim to increase the climate benefits from forests and the forest sector. However, these new technologies can lead to unanticipated social-political impacts, and smart forests, unlike smart cities, remain understudied. The EU-funded SmartForests project will investigate how smart forests are established and how digital technologies influence environmental management. Taking into consideration the fact that smart forests potentially run the risk of creating social-political inequalities and undemocratic governance, the project will explore and analyse how digital technologies transform forests and forest communities by examining practices of monitoring, mitigating, regulating and transforming environmental change. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective Forests are crucial to acting on environmental change. They are key contributors to the carbon cycle and biodiversity, as well as air and water quality. At the same time, digital technologies are reshaping forests in order to manage and enhance their environmental contributions. However, these new technologies are generating social-political impacts that have yet to be extensively researched. For the first time, this groundbreaking project addresses the vital question of how forests are becoming “smart” through the increasing use of digital technologies to manage these environments. Smart forests span locations from Germany to New York City to Thailand, and from remote to urban areas. While there is now extensive research on smart cities, other “smart” environments have been less well studied. This is problematic, since it is necessary to assess how these technologies enable and constrain particular modes of governance and engagement. Without this research, smart environments such as smart forests run the risk of producing social-political inequities and undemocratic governance, as has been identified with smart cities. Using inventive digital practices, fieldwork, participatory workshops and mapping, the research will investigate the transformation of forests and forest communities through digital technologies. Through 5 case studies, the project will analyze the ways in which forest technologies are transforming practices of observing, mitigating, participating in, and regulating environmental change. SmartForests asks not just how digital technologies are remaking forests, but also investigates how forests become social-political technologies for addressing environmental change. Situated at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and digital media studies, the research will demonstrate how these technologies impact socio-ecological relations, and will propose more equitable approaches to digital and environmental practice and policy. Fields of science engineering and technologycivil engineeringurban engineeringsmart citiessocial sciencessociologygovernancenatural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrologysocial sciencessociologyanthropologyscience and technology studiesnatural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems Keywords digital technology smart environments environmental media forests Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2019-COG - ERC Consolidator Grant Call for proposal ERC-2019-COG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant Host institution THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Net EU contribution € 1 996 004,00 Address TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS CB2 1TN Cambridge United Kingdom See on map Region East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 996 004,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE United Kingdom Net EU contribution € 1 996 004,00 Address TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS CB2 1TN Cambridge See on map Region East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 996 004,00
