In opposition to this, a growing number of grassroots groups, environmental NGOs, and civil society organisations in the developing world are contending that economic approaches reinforce corporate, rather than local control, over natural resources. They are calling for alternative knowledges and ecological perspectives to be supported as the ‘building blocks’ of genuine people- centred sustainable development. This project explores how the digital (geo)humanities might be used to empower disadvantaged communities, restore environmental rights and transform the global conservation agenda.

Adapting the practice of nature writing (which entails the creative expression of environmental values) to a contemporary digital context, this project makes use of the written word and digital video to amplify the environmental voices of marginalised communities in the Philippines. It works exclusively with women in marginal urban and agricultural environments, whose appreciations of nature are too often misunderstood or entirely unknown. Through traditional writing and digital formats (i.e. video) the project seeks to understand their environmental challenges and advance their environmental priorities. By so doing, this project challenges the historical status of nature writing as an avocation of white, Western, upper-middle-class men.

Financialised approaches to environmental conservation may profess to be concerned with the needs of human communities, but they do not embrace the perspectives, interests, and rights-based claims of underprivileged and under-represented groups at margins of the global environmental agenda. This project is aimed at writing this wrong.