Smart adaptation or data colonialism? Interrogating the role of digital technologies in climate adaptation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8135943
AutoresGiovanna Gioli (0000-0001-6918-3544, Bath Spa University, autor de correspondencia), Giovanni Bettini (0000-0002-1191-1913, Lancaster University)
Año2026
Volumen9
Número2
Páginas777-790
Fecha de publicación2026-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/25148486251409982
OpenAlexW7125526553
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas75

Highlighting a gap in adaptation studies regarding the role of digitalisation and datafication in environmental and climate governance, we argue for the need to critically engage with the ever-expanding experimental territory of smart adaptation . To accomplish this task, we emphasise the need to forge new alliances across the fields of digital geographies, political ecology, and political economy. We trace a genealogy of the discourse on smart adaptation and highlight how the basic premises on which mainstream approaches to adaptation operate ( neutrality and naturalization ) have been articulated through digitalised approaches since the very outset (through the ‘climate service paradigm’). This articulation relies upon the need of ever-expanding data supplies, the creation of data relations across scales and space, and the transformation of data into a source of value. Foregrounding the figure of the ‘smallholder farmer’ in adaptive development, we outline three modalities through which smart adaptation operates: depoliticization , financialization and experimentation . Finally, we call for the need to put adaptation scholarship in dialogue with the emerging field thematizing data colonialism as an analytic device to shed light on extractive processes of datafied capital accumulation and dispossession which stem from the conjoined coloniality of climate change and digital infrastructures

Adaptation (eye · Articulation (sociology · Big data · Field (mathematics · Foregrounding · Mainstream · Obsolescence · Scholarship · Underpinning · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance