Ant Forest is a Chinese app developed by Alibaba that claims to leverage its technology to solve environmental problems within and beyond China. By financialising and gamifying individ-uals’ carbon footprints with scores and rewards, it allows users to participate in tree planting as they consume online. Through the frame of ‘envi-ronmentality’, this essay discusses how Ant Forest manipulates the environment as a site of financial and biopolitical calculation. In contrast with accounts of Chinese authoritarian environ-mentalism, the article calls for a wider reckoning with the ongoing process of nature’s financial-isation, which is both reinforcing and reinforced by forms of sovereign and governmental power.
The Promethean Ant Forest Alibaba’s App as a Financialising Environmental Tool
giulia dal maso
2023-01-01
Abstract
Ant Forest is a Chinese app developed by Alibaba that claims to leverage its technology to solve environmental problems within and beyond China. By financialising and gamifying individ-uals’ carbon footprints with scores and rewards, it allows users to participate in tree planting as they consume online. Through the frame of ‘envi-ronmentality’, this essay discusses how Ant Forest manipulates the environment as a site of financial and biopolitical calculation. In contrast with accounts of Chinese authoritarian environ-mentalism, the article calls for a wider reckoning with the ongoing process of nature’s financial-isation, which is both reinforcing and reinforced by forms of sovereign and governmental power.
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