FROM SPACE TO TERRITORY

MEMORY AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION REGIMES

Abstract

The intensification of the global environmental crisis has exposed the limitations of technocratic approaches focused exclusively on instrumental rationalities for managing the society-nature relationship. In this scenario, ancestral knowledge, historically constructed in close relation to specific territories and transmitted through collective memory and orality, emerges as a legitimate source of sustainable practices. Simultaneously, environmental data produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has played a central role in monitoring environmental phenomena on a global scale, such as climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity loss. However, when dissociated from local sociocultural contexts, this data presents limitations for promoting effective sustainable practices. Therefore, the central question guiding this research is: how can environmental data produced by NASA be articulated with ancestral knowledge in information regimes that favor sustainable practices, respecting collective memory and the preservation of traditional knowledge? To answer this question, methodologically, we adopted a qualitative approach, of an interpretative nature, based on a second-order hermeneutic analysis. From this perspective, both scientific data and traditional knowledge are understood as epistemic and cultural constructions embedded in specific regimes of information production, validation, and circulation. Finally, we conclude that the articulation between these knowledge systems requires informational mediation of an epistemological, hermeneutical, and political nature, capable of integrating global metrics and territorial memories, recognizing the legitimacy of ancestral knowledge and repositioning Information Science as a strategic field in the ethical governance of environmental knowledge.