In drawing together this report, we analysed policy and grey literature relevant to community-led smart forest interactions, which complemented our ongoing review of academic literature. We reviewed over forty policy and grey literature papers, encompassing a range of environmental, social engagement and technology topics. The papers ranged from accessible toolkits targeted at communities or funders to highly technical papers aimed at policymakers, industry actors and NGOs. Our search terms included smart forests, community, carbon, smart agriculture, earth observation, digital forests, forest fires, wildfires, biodiversity, and environmental monitoring. Notably, this review of papers represents only a selection of the grey literature published on these topics and cannot be considered fully comprehensive. 

These publications offered useful insights, particularly in recommending innovative ways to evenly engage diverse communities with either technologies or their local environments. We have let these principles inform our research into community-led forest technologies and allowed them to shape the policy considerations at the end of this report. 

We have also been inspired by the creative design and content found in much of the grey literature. For example, publications inviting communities to use their mapping tools and share maps to an online platform, or papers placing audio and visual media in conversation with text (as seen in the ODI’s ‘Power, Ecology and Diplomacy in Critical Data Infrastructure’). Our report draws on some of these more inventive practices in the hope of attracting diverse readerships and encouraging new patterns of thinking.

The grey literature broadly encompassed three themes:

While papers in these areas offered incisive findings, only a handful triangulated all three themes. Those that did so either focused on a single location, such as Global Systems for Mobile Communications Association’s paper on ‘Mobile Technology for Participatory Forest Management: Co-designing and testing prototypes in Kenya’, or were targeted primarily at communities for practical use, as seen in the ‘Rainforest Tech Primer,’ produced by The Engine Room and Rainforest Foundation Norway. 

This report, in response, sets out to connect these three topic areas across forest environments, communities, and the social-political impacts of technologies. It also looks beyond singular examples to synthesise insights across locations worldwide and to address broader audiences of local communities, policymakers, NGOs, industry actors, technology and research funders, journalists, academics and wider publics.

In our grey literature review, we read papers concerned with the distribution and access of digital technologies. For example, in their paper ‘Affordable, Accessible and Easy-to-Use: A radically inclusive approach to building a better digital society’, the social enterprise Promising Trouble argues that digital access is a super-social determinant of health. The paper proposes routes for enacting radical digital inclusion, such as removing economic barriers to digital access through legislation and creating a standard for ‘inclusive-by-design’, which also offers non-digital options. Other papers raised concerns over digital technologies’ accessibility for non-literate people (Mapping for Rights). Notably, while many papers use the terminology of ‘digital inclusion and exclusion’, we use the more pluralistic and nuanced concept of ‘distribution and access of digital technologies’. This more open-ended term encourages a more pluralistic understanding of digital technology beyond inclusion or exclusion in a more singular mode of technological engagement.

Another topic covered in the grey literature was the co-design of technology by communities. Various reports suggested that tools and infrastructures created by, with and for communities could strengthen communities, increase the impact of community organisations, and promote diverse and sustainable technology systems. Some papers offered practical guides for organisations seeking to co-design technology products, such as Data & Society’s paper, ‘Democratizing AI: Principles for Meaningful Public Participation’. At the same time, there are critiques of the conceptualisation of ‘democratizing AI’ since AI may not be amenable to democratising practices given its expense, energy consumption, and technical requirements. The desire to co-design technology products raises questions about which communities are being consulted, how and for whom. 

Finally, on this theme of the social-political impacts of digital technologies, we saw papers concerned with the social-political challenges and stakes of critical data infrastructure, such as fibre-optic undersea cables, satellites, and data centres. For example, the Open Data Institute (ODI) considered how the ‘physical aspects of the internet reveal its vulnerability to global issues like climate change and geopolitical structures’. Their paper emphasises most societies’ dependence on a functioning internet, the international power dynamics at play in ownership of critical data infrastructure, and the ecological risks of this infrastructure. 

This literature developed our understanding of the social-political implications of public-private digital infrastructures and highlighted the uneven distribution of digital technologies within and between communities. It also alerted us to ways communities might be better involved in co-designing smart forest technologies.

Our review of grey literature led us to evaluate a robust set of papers advocating for improved community involvement in environments. This literature encompassed topics of community land protection, socially just transitions in land use change and public engagement on environmental issues.

Many of these papers are structured as practical guides or toolkits and written for community audiences. Toolkits such as the Community Sentinels ‘Methodology Guide for Community Participatory Monitoring’ are composed playfully, with illustrations and non-linear pages, suggesting the importance of creative narratives and design when facilitating diverse engagements. Community Sentinels’ guide frames monitoring as collective care work that generates interpersonal relationships between humans and nature. It encourages community participants to use their senses to attend to biodiversity, climate change and environmental risks, as well as to cultural landscapes, activities, stories and memories. 

Other papers are more targeted towards those seeking to engage communities in land use change and environments. The grey literature offers policymakers and organisations pointers on meaningful public engagement with environmental change. Methods range from conducting iterative consultations to supporting trusted messages, pursuing long-term trusted partnerships, delegating power and resources locally, and creating nested governance mechanisms. Some reports also proposed experimental interdisciplinary methods, such as engaging communities in ‘Moral Imagining’ that ‘seeks to embed three pillars into decision-making: nature and the more-than-human world, future unborn generations and ancestors and the past’. In a different but complementary way, the ‘Socially Just Landscape Restoration in the Scottish Highlands’ from the University of East Anglia urges landscape restoration projects to prioritise social justice concerns such as deprivation and access to land, services and housing. It suggests that landscape regeneration should foreground local livelihoods and the non-economic values and priorities of local people by investing in community-benefits sharing arrangements and fostering meaningful participation to strengthen community influence.

This literature review uncovered practical, often creative, methods for foregrounding community voices in their environments. It also deepened our understanding of how environmental projects can impact surrounding communities, both in terms of livelihoods, benefits sharing, health and wellbeing.

In our grey literature review, we also read numerous papers that discussed technology in environments and technologizing environments, with a focus on forests. These papers often had a more technical, academic focus. They ranged from technical papers on climate-smart forestry and agriculture, to those on remote sensing for forest fire management, to papers on technologies for climate mitigation and adaptation. Pathways to meet climate targets and to increase investment in the environment sector were often proposed in papers looking into the intersection of technology and environments. The literature commented on the rapid pace of technological innovation in forests.

Other papers touched on the social-political impacts of the changing nature of commercial forestry and energy transitions in the light of climate change and new technologies, particularly with employment. These papers were generally more targeted towards policymakers, legislators and academics. Examples include the ‘Occupational safety and health in the future of forestry work’, written by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). This paper forecasts shifts in forestry work in the context of new technologies, climate change and demographic transformations, and considers resultant human health and safety risks and opportunities. Considering the impact of digital technologies on the sector, the paper suggests that the use of robotics, fatigue detection systems and remote sensors might simultaneously impact employment and yet improve occupational safety and health.

This literature on the technologies in forest environments was often highly technical. The less accessible nature of these papers could indicate a lack of interest in community and public engagement by many smart forest technology developers, researchers and regulators.   

While there is substantial grey literature on the social-political impacts of technologies, community engagement with environments, and technologies in environments, we found very few publications that drew these three themes together. Those we did encounter were either highly specific in their research location or targeted at communities for practical use. This Smart Forests report seeks to contribute research findings that demonstrate the importance of community engagement and leadership. Our report aims to address and be useful to a wide audience and to spark unique alliances among various forest actors.