The Future That Grows on Trees - Studying the social life of climate change mitigation through forests

由于全球能源需求和消费不断增长，仅靠减排不足以实现1.5摄氏度的目标。额外的温室气体清除措施--无论是通过技术创新还是自然碳汇--都是越来越受欢迎的气候行动形式。其中，森林作为社会技术生态系统，由于其将碳结合在生物量中的天然能力而占据突出地位。由于碳封存的市场化被批评为造成更多的排放而不是避免排放，我的项目建议建议考虑其他与树木有关的投机性做法。连接人类学文献的投机科学和技术研究的替代方式，其中人类和环境相互参与的研究，我的项目是由森林如何参与改变自然和文化之间的关系的问题，并问：什么是社会和政治的影响，通过树木构建未来？我将应用多地点民族志方法，研究如何通过基于生物质的温室气体去除技术重新谈判自然与文化之间的界限，并通过该项目为气候变化的社会研究做出贡献。

Due to growing global energy demand and consumption, emission reduction alone will be insufficient for reaching the 1.5-degree objective. Additional greenhouse gas removal measures - either through technological innovation or natural carbon sinks - are increasingly popular forms of climate action. Amongst those, forests as socio-technical ecologies take a prominent position due to their natural ability to bind carbon in their biomass. As the marketization of carbon sequestration has been criticized for causing more emissions than avoiding them, my project proposal suggests looking at other speculative practices with trees. Connecting anthropological literature on speculation to Science and Technology studies research on alternative ways in which humans and the environment engage with each other, my project is guided by the question of how forests participate in transforming the relationship between nature and culture, and asks: What are the social and political implications for constructing the future through trees? Applying a multi-sited ethnographic approach, I will study how boundaries between nature and culture are renegotiated through biomass-based greenhouse gas removal techniques, and contribute with this project to the social study of climate change.