As governments across South Asia invest in digital technologies, infrastructure and environmental monitoring, University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) researcher Bilal Butt believes the region offers an opportunity to rethink how environmental problems are understood.

Butt, who is also a senior advisor to the Center for Global Health Equity, studies political ecology and environmental justice. His research examines how environmental change, development and governance intersect across the Global South, with recent work exploring environmental health, data justice, climate coloniality and the politics of infrastructure.

That broader perspective is central to Butt’s work in political ecology, an interdisciplinary field that examines how environmental change is shaped by history, governance, economics, and power. Rather than viewing environmental problems as isolated technical challenges, political ecology asks who benefits from development, who bears its costs, and whose voices are included, or excluded, from decision-making.

Those questions are especially relevant in South Asia, where digital technologies are rapidly becoming part of everyday life. Agricultural platforms promise to help farmers increase yields. Financial technology offers new ways to access credit and insurance. Artificial intelligence is increasingly promoted as a tool for managing natural resources and improving productivity.

Yet Butt says those technologies cannot be understood apart from the social and political systems in which they operate.

Read the full article on the U-M Center for South Asian Studies website.

Read more about Bilal Butt's research in this Q&A on the Michigan News website.