Responding to the Violent and Extractive Logic of Data Mining with Environmental Data Justice

• In Event: Technology, Violence, and Resistance: Feminist, Decolonial, and Intersectional Perspectives

Abstract

We engage ‘environmental data justice’ to create data infrastructures for an equitable pluriverse instead of for the matrix of domination consisting of interlocking structures of oppression. The matrix of domination produces both environmental injustices (disproportionate burdens of environmental risk and illness) and data infrastructures, which consist of the people, organizations, tools, and practices that produce data and influence governance. Paradoxically, environmental justice activists also need these data infrastructures to prove harms and advocate for better health and livelihoods. We argue that this tension exists because the matrix of domination shaping environment injustices and data operates through a colonial ‘extractive logic,’ i.e. the ongoing, violent, material and discursive act of pulling relations from bodies and lands to render them as ‘free’ material to be ‘harvested.’ While data extraction may seem more abstract and less tangible than resource extraction (including air, water, and land), we argue that data, too, are material and often embodied objects produced by historical and social relations. We show that the logic of data extraction disconnects data from its provenance, privileges the matrix of domination, and whitewashes data to generate uncertainty about environmental harms’ existence, causes, and solutions. In contrast, we propose environmental data justice as a framework that seeks to develop alternative data and epistemic infrastructures centering community and marginalized perspectives, open-source tools, and ongoing reflexivity regarding never-innocent data practices. We provide examples in our work with the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, which monitors and challenges US federal environmental policy and data infrastructures.

Authors

• Lourdes Annette Vera, Northeastern University

• Becky K Mansfield, Ohio State University