Sonja Peteranderl, Sarah Hackfort and Miriam Boyer have published an online article in “Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik”.
The full article (in German) can be accessed here: https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2025/februar/hightech-waechter-fuer-den-regenwald
Juliane Schumacher has published an article in ak (“analyse & kritik”).
The full article can be accessed via the following link: https://www.akweb.de/politik/gefaehrliche-kohlenstoffmaerkte-cop29-baku-c02-klimaneutral/
Juliane Schumacher has published an online article for iz3w.
The full article is available in German at the following link: https://www.iz3w.org/artikel/klimakonferenz-cop29-baku-emissionen-handel-wald
For Journalist Magazine, Sonja Peteranderl, Researcher & Journalist in Residence in the Biomaterialities research group, analyzes how journalists tag e-waste, trees or clothing with trackers to prove abuses such as illegal waste disposal or greenwashing. How the technology is used in environmental research – and why it can harm people.
You can read the full report here:
https://www.journalist.de/werkstatt/werkstatt-detail/ein-babystrampler-der-sich-aus-belgrad-meldet/
Till Kümmelberger, Sarah Hackfort and Mascha Gugganig have published an article in the newspaper Unabhängige Bauernstimme.
The article is available at the following link: https://www.bauernstimme.de/news/details/digitalisierung-und-diversitaet-in-der-landwirtschaft
For Journalist Magazine, Sonja Peteranderl, Researcher & Journalist in Residence in the Biomaterialities research group, analyzes how open source intelligence tools (OSINT) such as satellite imagery can help uncover environmental crimes. Companies and governments around the world are destroying nature, and criminal groups are also committing illegal logging, exploitation of raw materials and illegal wildlife trade. Exposing these crimes is more important than ever – and can be life-threatening for journalists, researchers and environmentalists.
Read the full report here (German):
https://www.journalist.de/werkstatt/werkstatt-detail/jagd-auf-umweltverbrecher/
Jana Rebecca Holz and Anna Saave have published an article in Ecological Economics.
Abstract
This paper contributes to the political economic analysis of industrial forestry in the Global North (GN) by introducing and applying elements of an analytical framework for extractivist valorization. The proposed framework serves as a complement, systematization, and extension of the concepts of valorization and (post-fossil) extractivism. It scrutinizes the political-economic constellation and social as well as ecological sustainability challenges of current dominant practices in industrial forestry in the GN. The (potential) contribution and role of industrial forestry in social-ecological transformation processes is contested, although forestry is often perceived as a sustainable sector per se, and its services and products are crucial for many sustainability, bioeconomy, and decarbonization strategies. With the proposed analytical framework, the paper investigates forestry as an industry that socially and economically mediates relationships between individuals, society, and nature. The paper illustrates the analytical potential of the proposed framework by applying it to two exemplary cases of industrial forestry: Finland and the Canadian province of Alberta. The paper concludes that such a framework can provide relevant insights into the sustainability challenges in industrial forestry in both cases examined. New pathways of valuing and using forests need to be actively pursued to integrate the forest sector into the broader project of social-ecological transformations.
Cornelius Heimstädt and Maximilian Heimstädt have published a preprint of their article “Algorithmic Expert Services: When Expert Values Meet Scalability Thinking”. The final article will be published in spring 2025 in a special issue of the journal Research in the Sociology of Organizations on the topic “Expertise in Research in the Sociology of Organizations.”
You can find the preprint at the following link: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/2s56x.
Sarah Hackfort and Anna Saave, together with Carlotta Brinkmann from Universität Erfurt, have published a blog entry on Feminist Perspectives on the Bioeconomy on econ4future.org.
Sarah Hackfort published an article in Frontiers in Political Science.
This piece addresses the political dimension of sustainability in the agricultural bioeconomy by focusing on power, participation, and property rights around key technologies. Bioeconomy policies aim to establish economic systems based on renewable resources such as plants and microorganisms to reduce dependence on fossil resources. To achieve this, they rely on economic growth and increased biomass production through high-tech innovations. This direction has sparked important critique of the environmental and social sustainability of such projects. However, little attention has been paid in the bioeconomy literature to the political dimension surrounding key precision technologies such as data-driven precision agriculture (PA) or precision breeding technologies using new genomic techniques (NGT). The political dimension includes questions of power, participation, and property rights regarding these technologies and the distribution of the benefits and burdens they generate. This lack of attention is particularly pertinent given the recurring and promising claims that precision technologies not only enhance environmental sustainability, but also contribute to the democratization of food and biomass production. This contribution addresses this claim in asking whether we can really speak of a democratization of the agricultural bioeconomy through these precision technologies. Drawing on (own) empirical research and historical evidence, it concludes that current patterns are neither driving nor indicative of a democratization. On the contrary, corporate control, unequal access, distribution, and property rights over data and patents point to few gains for small firms and breeders, but to a reproduction of farmers’ dependencies, and less transparency for consumers.?
The paper has been published open access and can be read online.
Hackfort, S. (2024). Democratization through precision technologies? Unveiling power, participation, and property rights in the agricultural bioeconomy. Frontiers in Political Science, 6, 1363044. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2024.1363044
Header image generated using openai.com.