Beyond Carbon was founded in 2024 to counter carbon-oriented forest data infrastructures with community-owned knowledges of landscapes.

Projects

Beyond Carbon has two components: a data visualization prototype that explicitly links forest carbon data with Indigenous and Local Communities’ (IPLC) stewardship practices; and a three-screen video installation welding animation with satellite data and live action footage into an immersive viewing experience that encapsulates the deep interdependence between humans and our more-than-human planetary co-dwellers.

Both components are ongoing collaborations with elders, women, and youth technologists of Mekar Raya village in West Kalimantan, Indonesia and our in-country partners Tropenbos Indonesia and the Working Group of ICCAs in Indonesia (WGII).

The Installation

We bring together different 'ways of knowing' landscapes in a single-site triptych installation. A multi-sensory experience spanning oral history, data visualization, and animation, our aim is to ground carbon in lived histories across generations.

The Prototype

Our data visualization tool connects global carbon data with community-created maps to demonstrate the overlap between high carbon stock areas and traditionally stewarded forests, proving that forest carbon is inseparable from Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities' conservation traditions.

Resources

Writings

Scientists often erase the people who live in and shape the forest

Interview to Felipe Mammoli

Felipe Mammoli

A recent interview conducted by the Center for Climate IT at the University of Copenhagen with Felipe M., focused on his work and perspectives.

Knowing from Above

Madhuri Karak & Matthew Lewis

A collaboration published in the independent magazine It’s Freezing in LA! that addresses climate-change topics through slow journalism and typographic illustration developed by Matthew Lewis.

About the Exhibition in Mekar Raya

A recap of the exhibition presented in the village of Mekar Raya on February 18, 2025.

Our Cyborgian Orchard

Madhuri Karak & Felipe Mammoli

A publication that describes the climate-data visualization prototype, which includes sonifications of climate data from the Brazilian Amazon.