Planetary Praxis

How can we restore landscapes with people, not just for them?

Jennifer Gabrys' & David Brown's research explores how communities lead & shape regeneration & what makes people-centred approaches fairer, democratic, & effective.

Read more on CLRs blog: www.clr.conservation.cam.ac.uk/news/putting...

The review, published in @ambio-journal.bsky.social, develops an analytical framework and provide recommendations for community-based landscape regeneration to support and mobilise more democratic and socially just approaches to ecological regeneration initiatives.

David Brown explains the ‘participatory mapping’ activity during a workshop. He stands beside a projected slide showing a map covered with colourful sticky notes and bullet points outlining the mapping process.

Large printed maps spread across round tables in a workshop room.

Undertaken as part of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration research initiative @clr-cambridge.bsky.social, the authors map landscape regeneration and restoration initiatives across international contexts based on four themes around community organisation, land ownership, engagement and land values.

Front page of the paper ‘Community-led landscape regeneration: A review of and framework for engagement in restoration initiatives’ published in Ambio by David Brown and Jennifer Gabrys (2025).

In this new paper, David Brown @browndee17.bsky.social and Jennifer Gabrys explore the role of communities in landscape regeneration initiatives worldwide through a systematic review: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

It proposes that a more deliberate encounter with forests as technologies could counterintuitively transform social-ecological relations and contribute to more equitable environmental practices.

Analysing the technicities of trillion-trees research and initiatives, the paper shows how trees and forests can figure less as carbon removal machinery but more as community-based practices of cultivating and connecting with environments.

In her new paper, “This Machine Kills CO2,” Jennifer Gabrys considers the narrative of trees as machines, which reflects the role of technological thinking in addressing planetary crises: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Smart Forests uses tech + grey literature to rethink forest governance 🌲
With help from Policy Commons, they surfaced 60+ practice-based insights on equity and civic design.
policycommons.net/orgs/smart-f...
@planetarypraxis.bsky.social
#SmartForests #PlanetaryPraxis #ForestTech #OpenAccess

Also check out the related Story by Michelle on the Smart Forests Atlas: atlas.smartforests.net/en/stories/d...

This participatory research highlights the community’s nuanced relationships with local biodiversity and offers practical design recommendations for biodiversity technologies that can better align with local restoration efforts.

Front page of "Designing Biodiversity Systems via Digital Kinships: Insights from Community Data Processes and Creative Practice" by Michelle Westerlaken, published in CSCW, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10606-025-09524-2?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oa_20250616&utm_content=10.1007/s10606-025-09524-2

Images of the community’s engagement with the installation where participants used their mobile phone to access open data through the QR codes. Images of different categories created by participants: ‘present or absent?’ (aanwezig of afwezig), ‘futures’. Some of the notes and data points that were added by participants. Image credit: Michelle Westerlaken, source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10606-025-09524-2?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oa_20250616&utm_content=10.1007/s10606-025-09524-2

In this new article, 'Designing Biodiversity Systems via Digital Kinships’, Michelle Westerlaken examines how digital biodiversity data is used in local restoration based on her fieldwork in a Dutch living lab: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Professorship of Sociology (1985) at University of Cambridge Apply for the The Professorship of Sociology (1985) role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

Our department is hiring for this prestigious professorship! Applications are welcome from scholars working in any area of the discipline. The position offers a competitive salary.

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNI980/t... @camsociology.bsky.social

रिपोर्ट दुनिया भर में वनों के डिजिटलीकरण के सामाजिक-राजनीतिक प्रभावों की पड़ताल करती है। चिली, इंडोनेशिया, नीदरलैंड और भारत के चार केस स्टडीज पर आधारित यह वन प्रौद्योगिकियों के लिए विविध समुदाय-नेतृत्व वाले दृष्टिकोणों को सुनिश्चित करने के लिए रणनीतियों का प्रस्ताव करती है।

*समुदाय-नेतृत्ववालीवनप्रौद्योगिकी: एकस्मार्टवनअंतरिमरिपोर* का कवर पेज (2025), https://publications.smartforests.net/hi/community-led-forest-technologies/web-version.

*समुदाय-नेतृत्व वाली वन प्रौद्योगिकी* अंतरिम रिपोर्ट अब हिंदी में भी उपलब्ध है - ऑनलाइन और पीडीएफ के रूप में: publications.smartforests.net/hi/community...

Laporan ini mengeksplorasi dampak sosial-politik dari digitalisasi hutan di seluruh dunia. Berdasarkan empat studi kasus dari Chili, Indonesia, Belanda, dan India, laporan ini mengusulkan strategi untuk memastikan keberagaman pendekatan teknologi kehutanan yang dipimpin oleh komunitas.

Halaman sampul * Teknologi Hutan yang Dipimpin Masyarakat: Laporan Sementara Hutan Cerdas* (2025), https://publications.smartforests.net/in/community-led-forest-technologies/.

Laporan sementara *Teknologi Hutan yang Dipimpin Masyarakat* kini telah tersedia dalam bahasa Indonesia - daring dan dalam format PDF: publications.smartforests.net/in/community...

El informe explora los impactos sociopolíticos de la digitalización de los bosques en todo el mundo. Basado en cuatro estudios de caso de Chile, Indonesia, Países Bajos e India, propone estrategias para garantizar enfoques comunitarios diversos para las tecnologías forestales.

Portada de * Tecnologías forestales comunitarias: Un informe interino de Smart Forests* (2025), https://publications.smartforests.net/es/community-led-forest-technologies/.

Nuestro informe provisional *Tecnologías Forestales Lideradas por la Comunidad* ya está disponible en español, en línea y en formato PDF: publications.smartforests.net/es/community...

You can read the full report on the web and in PDF format on our website:
Español: publications.smartforests.net/es/community...
Bahasa Indonesia: publications.smartforests.net/in/community...
हिंदी: publications.smartforests.net/hi/community...
English: publications.smartforests.net/en/community...

The report explores the socio-political impacts of the digitalisation of forests around the world. Grounded in the four case studies from Chile, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and India, it proposes strategies to ensure diverse community-led approaches to forest technologies.

Cover pages of ‘Community-led Forest Technologies: A Smart Forests Interim Report’ (2025) in English, Spanish, Indonesian, and Hindi. Source: https://publications.smartforests.net/en/community-led-forest-technologies/

Our *Community-led Forest Technologies* interim report is now available in three additional languages: Spanish, Indonesian, and Hindi, alongside English.

Pages from “Sensing a Planet on Fire and Listening with Forests” by Jennifer Gabrys in Common Sensing, by Riccardo Badano, Tomas Percival, and Susan Schuppli (Centre for Research Architecture).

Pages from “Sensing a Planet on Fire and Listening with Forests” by Jennifer Gabrys in Common Sensing, by Riccardo Badano, Tomas Percival, and Susan Schuppli (Centre for Research Architecture).

The collection includes a new chapter by Jennifer Gabrys, “Sensing a Planet on Fire and Listening with Forests,” that draws on Smart Forests fieldwork in Chile, focusing on fire, fire technology, and community engagement with wildfires.

This compelling collection gathers diverse perspectives on “sensory commons” and different ways of sensing environmental conditions across theory and practice, with multiple tools and instruments, and in contexts spanning Pakistan, Palestine, Turkey, Chile and more.

Table of contents from Common Sensing, edited by Riccardo Badano, Tomas Percival, and Susan Schuppli (Centre for Research Architecture).

Back cover of Common Sensing, edited by Riccardo Badano, Tomas Percival, and Susan Schuppli (Centre for Research Architecture).

Check out this new publication, *Common Sensing*, edited by Riccardo Badano, Tomas Percival, and Susan Schuppli at the Centre for Research Architecture.
Find the book here: spectorbooks.com/book/common-...

Screenshot showing the list of episodes in The Forest Multiple playlist on Smart Forests Radio.

This article is part of our “The Forest Multiple” special issue with Environment and Planning F: journals.sagepub.com/toc/epfa/4/2.
You can also listen to the Forest Multiple symposium and other Radio episodes on the Smart Forests Atlas platform: atlas.smartforests.net/en/playlists...

“Forestry 4.0” video. FPInnovations. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4vhLQ8OEP0.

We show how multiple versions of smart forests are proposed, implemented, contested and transformed. We note, “It is as important to ask whose and which smart environment speculations are foregrounded, as it is to examine the material-spatial worlds that are built.”

Front page of the article “Actually existing smart forests: A proposal for pluralizing eco-technical worlds,” from the Special Issue on “The Forest Multiple,” by Jennifer Gabrys, Michelle Westerlaken, and Yuti Ariani, published in the Environment and Planning F.

In “Actually existing smart forests,” Jennifer Gabrys, Michelle Westerlaken, and @yutiariani.bsky.social revisit the analytic of “actually existing” to consider how speculation is a critical component of how smart environments are composed and realised: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Screenshot showing the list of episodes in The Forest Multiple playlist on Smart Forests Radio.

This text is part of our special issue “The Forest Multiple” with Environment and Planning F. Lydia and Tone each presented their research at the Forest Multiple symposium - available on Smart Forests Radio.
Lydia: atlas.smartforests.net/en/radio/the...
Tone: atlas.smartforests.net/en/radio/the...

Focusing on environmental data practices in the Brazilian Amazon and an upland Jamaican forest, the authors reveal how two forms of zero- as number and as concept - perpetuate colonial logics, where the digitalisation of forests is driven by processes of racial Othering and the creation of absences.

Front page of the article “Putting the digit back in digital: Zero as number and concept in the digitisation of forests,” from the Special Issue on “The Forest Multiple,” by Lydia Gibson and Tone Walford, published in the Environment and Planning F.

In “Putting the digit back in digital,” Lydia Gibson & Tone Walford foreground zero as a “digit” central to digitalisation, exploring how its numerical and conceptual forms transform and reproduce forest relations in ways that are calculative and deeply colonial: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....