Between monitoring and surveillance: Geographies of emerging drone technologies in contemporary conservation

Conservation has employed technologies for monitoring and visual capture since its inception in the nineteenth century. Since then, the capacities of conservation technologies have developed considerably, affording a wide range of data relating to ecological change and biodiversity loss. However, new technologies introduce fresh ethical and political issues into environmental protection, especially as they can be used – deliberately or accidentally – to collect information about human activities. This potential is important, given that many areas of biodiversity protection are also areas of longstanding conflict. We focus here on the political and ethical implications surrounding drones, which collect photographic and video footage that can include images of humans. We review approaches to technology, visuality, and surveillance across and beyond environmental geography over the last two decades, teasing out conceptual approaches that support a nuanced and critical analysis of conservation drones. Our analysis focuses on the ways that conservation drones alter (i) processes of decision-making, (ii) dynamics of fearmongering and control, (iii) processes of securitisation in protected areas, (iv) the production and circulation of (racial) stereotypes, and (v) the practices and outcomes of data justice. We unpack these themes through three case studies from our own fieldwork, clarifying the range of intentional and non-intentional political outcomes that emerge, and ethical themes that will be vital to explore further in the future.