​CFP POLLEN 2026: Critical engagements with ecological data and science

[Bilal Butt]

Title: Critical Engagements with Ecological Data and Science (Panel P132)

Pollen2026: Diverse Origins, Multiple Futures: The Stories of Political Ecology.

Barcelona, Spain, June 29 - July 3, 2026

Convenors: 

Ryan Unks (ICTA-UAB) RyanR...@uab.cat

Bilal Butt (University of Michigan) bil...@umich.edu 

Format: Panel 
Format/Structure: Traditional presentations and discussion of the political ecology of advanced statistical and geospatial modeling

Description:

Ecological and environmental sciences have evolved in close relation with capitalism and colonialism (Grove, 1996; Lewontin and Levins, 2007; Liboiron, 2021; Tilley, 2019). Political ecologists have a long history of drawing knowledges of ecology, environment, and the politics of this knowledge into question (Butt and Turner, 2012; Blaikie, 1985; Goldman, 2007; Lave et al., 2014; Turner, 1993). This work has shown how scientific epistemologies can be reductive in their consideration of scale, land use, livelihood systems, political boundaries, and ecosystem dynamics, and, in doing so, can provide empirical support for the interests of dominant actors (Fairhead and Leach, 1996; Davis, 2016). Given the proliferation of new types and amounts of data, along with increased computational capacity and machine learning approaches, there is a need for greater scrutiny to track how statistical and geospatial modeling can become laden with values. These approaches can create a sense of unprecedented generality, rigor, and certainty, but can also mask and compound errors and uncertainties, and “misread” landscapes and livelihoods in new ways. The outputs of these analyses can have profound implications for local communities: they can support crisis narratives that override local decision-making processes, legitimize top-down planning, and justify forced exclusions and other more subtle configurations of access to land. Beyond understanding the implications of ecological data and analysis for extending power, there is also a need for alternative analyses that highlight relationships between people and non-human nature that dominant approaches obscure. Recent examples include Schell et al. (2020), Sze et al. (2022), and Xu and Butt (2024).

We welcome a range of contributions, including but not limited to:
- biodiversity threat mapping
- remote sensing and earth observation
- ecosystem dynamics and change
- landscape connectivity and corridors
- community and population ecology
- drivers of wildlife population dynamics
- climate change

Deadlines:

• The deadline for submitting papers and other contributions is December 5th, 2025.
• The deadline for panel convenors to accept papers and other contributions to their panel is December 19th, 2025.
• Accepted papers will be announced in January 2026.
• The conference happens from 29 June to 3 July 2026.

References

Blaikie, P. (1995). Changing environments or changing views? A political ecology for developing countries. Geography, 80(3), 203-214.

Butt, B., & Turner, M. D. (2012). Clarifying competition: the case of wildlife and pastoral livestock in East Africa. Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice, 2(1), 9.

Davis, D. K. (2016). The arid lands: History, power, knowledge. MIT Press.

Fairhead, J., & Leach, M. (1996). Misreading the African landscape: society and ecology in a forest-savanna mosaic (No. 90). Cambridge University Press.

Goldman, M. (2007). Tracking wildebeest, locating knowledge: Maasai and conservation biology understandings of wildebeest behavior in Northern Tanzania. Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 25(2), 307-331.

Grove, R. H. (1996). Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860. Cambridge University Press.

Lave, R., Wilson, M. W., Barron, E. S., Biermann, C., Carey, M. A., Duvall, C. S., ... & Van Dyke, C. (2014). Intervention: Critical physical geography. The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien, 58(1), 1-10.

Lewontin, R., & Levins, R. (2007). Biology under the influence: Dialectical essays on the coevolution of nature and society. NYU Press.

Liboiron, M. (2021). Pollution is colonialism. Duke University Press.

Schell, C. J., Dyson, K., Fuentes, T. L., Des Roches, S., Harris, N. C., Miller, D. S., ... & Lambert, M. R. (2020). The ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism in urban environments. Science, 369(6510), eaay4497.

Tilley, H. (2019). Africa as a living laboratory: Empire, development, and the problem of scientific knowledge, 1870-1950. University of Chicago Press.

Sze, J. S., Carrasco, L. R., Childs, D., & Edwards, D. P. (2022). Reduced deforestation and degradation in Indigenous Lands pan-tropically. Nature Sustainability, 5(2), 123-130.

Turner, M. (1993). Overstocking the range: a critical analysis of the environmental science of Sahelian pastoralism. Economic Geography, 69(4), 402-421.

Xu, W., & Butt, B. (2024). Rethinking livestock encroachment at a protected area boundary. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(38), e2403655121.