Our research found that smart forest technologies can impact how communities engage with forests for livelihoods, altering and accelerating understandings of forests as extractable resources.

For example, remote observation tools can enable communities to monitor deforestation to monetise carbon. At the same time, these tools can produce dominant views of what forests are and how they should be identified and valued. Smart forest technologies’ distinct ways of seeing and sensing can obscure pluralistic, local and Indigenous understandings of forest processes if not carefully designed and deployed.

Likewise, technologies that monitor species, such as species ID apps, can lead to increased knowledge of forest species and employment opportunities for conserving iconic species. However, this could also lead to the neglect of less charismatic organisms. Concurrently, such species monitoring technologies could encourage a prioritisation of species that are most easily observed, while overlooking less detectable ecological relations that can be vital to the survival of forest communities. 

Discrepancies in access to smart forest technologies, both within and between communities, can lead to asymmetries of power and information access. Such discrepancies can also be compounded by scarce resources in terms of funding, personnel, and knowledge to obtain, implement and use digital technologies in what are often already constrained conditions.

Uneven distribution of technologies and resources occurs within many forest communities. Our research found that in some communities, smart forest technologies may be more commonly used by persons belonging to particular generations, genders and educational backgrounds. This uneven distribution of technologies may disrupt, reshape or amplify existing community power dynamics across these lines.

Smart forest technologies may also be unevenly distributed among communities. Some forest communities are more likely to receive smart forest technology support from private and public sources. Communities may be more likely to attract smart forest technologies if they inhabit ‘iconic forests’ (a term the organisation Climate Outreach uses to describe forests such as the Amazon that have become ‘global icons’ due to significant media coverage). Likewise, communities may be more likely to receive smart forest technologies if they are better equipped to attract funding (for example, due to language, skills or dedicated personnel). This discrepancy in support and funding may lead to perpetuating cycles that further exclude less connected communities and deepen inequalities. 

The distribution of technologies and resources to certain communities can have perverse consequences for others. For example, an interviewee based in a Brazilian environment, science, and technology organisation explained how, when only a select few forest communities are given the tools and assistance to identify and monitor illegal deforestation, illicit logging activities can be displaced onto surrounding areas of forest where other communities have not been able to access the same technologies and resources.

Since multinational corporations often design, develop and control technologies and networks, smart forests are also causing shifts in some aspects of environmental governance, away from community leaders or government actors and towards startups and technology sectors, including ‘big tech’. Alongside this, evolving carbon and biodiversity markets have prompted an increased private sector interest and involvement in monitoring ecosystem services in forests. Governments and communities across the globe are, therefore, becoming increasingly reliant on technologies owned and operated by private corporations. Moreover, the increasingly complex computational features of smart forest technologies make it challenging for some non-experts to use them.

An example of shifting governance can be seen when Chile’s National Forestry Corporation, Conaf, uses WhatsApp to coordinate emergency support and issue fire warnings to populations. Power and resource dynamics are at play when governments rely on private corporations to build and grant access to digital infrastructures. Similarly, public and emergency services can become reliant on private technology infrastructures that might not have regulations in place to ensure their accessibility and continuity during critical events. 

Both state actors and technology companies may use smart forest technologies to increase the observation, datafication, regulation and transformation not only of forest environments but also of forest communities. For example, our research found that certain state actors and technology companies are using smart forest technologies to surveil forest populations. The role of technology companies and state actors in smart forest technologies raises further questions about data ownership, data protection, and data harvesting.  

Smart forest technologies can also disrupt traditional power dynamics, allowing communities to document and share abuses of power and generate solidarity movements. For example, smart forest technologies can enable forest communities to use geospatial tools to map their lands and assert their land rights to the state. However, these forms of evidence can be unequally recognised depending upon the communities presenting evidence or making claims.

Smart forest technologies can also generate and strengthen forest networks, connecting communities beyond their geographical bounds and facilitating knowledge sharing. 

Digital technologies can generate dynamic, interdisciplinary and expansive community networks that cross institutions and scales of governance, connect urban and rural dwellers and partake in international conversations. Examples of strengthened forest networks can be seen in the digital sharing of educational forest resources, in solidarity movements for Indigenous and local peoples protecting rainforests from deforestation (such as the international support for the Karipuna people) and in urban citizen scientists partaking in digital communities as they monitor forest camera traps from afar (as seen in Mammal Web). Communities can also use digital networks to share knowledge about how best to form and mobilise people and resources to address wildfires or other disruptive forest events.

These digitally facilitated forest networks can both broaden and complicate notions of community. At the same time, there is a risk that communities and governments can become dependent upon proprietary apps and platforms over which they have no control or input. These digital networks also raise questions about which communities have the time and resources to foster connections beyond their geographical bounds.