Caroline E Schuster: Tech for good? Anthropology and the quest for ‘ground-truths’ after weather disasters
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This August, South America experienced a deadly heat wave, topping 40˚C in the middle of winter. Flash flooding, wildfires, and oceanic waterspouts are just some examples of what we might call ‘global weirding’ – weird, extreme weather events are becoming the norm.
Many areas, including here in Australia, are at risk of becoming uninsurable. This talk explores new technology that is promising a financial safety net for vulnerable communities who are dealing with these environmental perils. Parametric insurance uses remote sensing technologies, weather stations, and state of the art climate models, to link policies to the weather itself – if a drought strikes, the insurance pays. And yet for all of their technological sophistication, do these novel financial arrangements actually work for the small family farms they cover? Taking an anthropological approach means we can ask hard questions about competing views of what the “ground-truth” is, how damage is measured, and who is ultimately responsible for making life liveable in increasingly unknowable and unrecognisable environments.
Caroline E. Schuster is an Associate Professor in economic anthropology at the Australian National University. Her most recent book, Forecasts: a story of weather and finance at the edge of disaster (2023, University of Toronto Press) is a graphic ethnography – anthropological graphic novel – co-created with Paraguayan illustrators.