Unleakable carbon

Hendrick, Margaret F.; Cleveland, Shanna; Phillips, Nathan

doi:10.1080/14693062.2016.1202808

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

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“…While much of the climate discussion focuses on highly visible, industrial combustion of fossil fuels, a less investigated issue is the 'fugitive' , 'leaked' , 'vented' or 'flared' emissions related to fossil fuel extraction and production. Such unintended 'unleakable carbon' is mainly produced by gas flaring activities, which are also sources of direct and indirect environmental and social impacts (Hendrick et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme citizens science for climate justice: linking pixel to people for mapping gas flaring in Amazon rainforest

Facchinelli

Pappalardo²,

Fera³

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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In the Ecuadorian Amazon - one of Earth's last high-biodiversity wilderness areas and home to uncontacted indigenous populations – 50 years of widespread oil development is jeopardizing biodiversity and feeding environmental conflicts. In 2019, a campaign to eliminate oil-related gas flaring, led by Amazonian communities impacted by fossil fuel production, resulted in an injunction against the Ecuadoran Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources and the Ministry of Environment and Water. On January 26, 2021 the Court of Nueva Loja issued a historical order to ban gas flaring in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The present Citizen Science project plaied an important role in this process, enabling the production of independent spatial information through participatory mapping with indigenous and farmer communities. Globally, lack of independent information about oil activities has led to the monitoring of gas flaring by satellite imagery, achieving remarkable results. However, apart from institutional and remotely sensed data, reliable spatial information on gas flaring in the Ecuadorian Amazon is not available. Therefore, we adopted the Community-Based Participatory Action Research approach to develop a Participatory GIS process, aiming both to provide reliable data and to support social campaigns for environmental and climate justice. This work presents the first participatory mapping initiative of gas flaring at a regional scale, carried out completely through open source data and software. Having identified 295 previously unmapped gas flaring sites through participatory mapping, we highlight that the extent of gas flaring activities is well beyond the official data provided by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment and NOAA Nightfire annual datasets, which map only 24% and 33% of the sites, respectively. 75 of the detected sites were in the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. Moreover, 39 of the identified sites were venting instead of flaring, a phenomenon never before documented in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This study demonstrates that, because official datasets and satellite imagery underestimate the extent of gas flaring in the Ecuadorian Amazon, community-based mapping offers a promising alternative for producing trusted, community-based scientific data. This community-produced data can support campaigns for legal recognition of human rights and environmental justice in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Finally, this study shows how local environmental conflicts can foster policy transformations that promote climate justice.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%