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Mapping Fossil Fuels in Protected Areas

COP28 Briefing

Alice McGown Researcher & Project Lead @ LINGO alice.mcgown@leave-it-in-the-ground.org

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Mapping Fossil Fuel in Protected Areas

Questions to answer:

  • Why focus on protected areas?
  • How did we arrive at the final results?
  • What are those results?
  • What’s next?

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Why focus on protected areas?

Because they’re protected for a reason.

  • Best place to start creating non-extraction policies.
  • Frequently areas of biological and cultural importance.
  • The impacts of extraction are often amplified…

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Yasuní National Park, Ecuador (Lou Dematteis/Redux)

Amazon National Forest, Brazil (HRT Oil & Gas)

Royal National Park, USA (Nick McLaren/ABC News)

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How did we arrive at the final results?

Methodology

Geoprocessing

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Identifying projects in protected areas, summarizing statistics…

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Rystad database of Oil/Gas Projects

IUCN database of protected areas

GEM database of Coal Projects

Cleanup

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Deduplication, cleanup, label normalization…�

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“Per Protected Area” Stats

“Per Country” Stats

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What are the results?

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What are the results?

The Global Picture

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2337

Total Extraction Projects in Protected Areas

The Global Picture

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50.8

Total Potential CO2 from Extraction in Protected Areas

BILLION

TONNES

The Global Picture

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Profiting Companies

Profiting Company

Potential CO2 Emissions (million tonnes)

Saudi Aramco

5,629

RWE Power

2,700

PDVSA

1,945

Usibelli Mine

1,400

TotalEnergies

1,275

Shell

1,214

ExxonMobil

1,122

Gazprom

1,119

The Global Picture

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Now we know

The Global Picture

how much we’re extracting from protected areas.

But…

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The Global Picture

How much fossil fuel is actually under protected areas?

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Global Fossil Fuel Deposits

The Global Picture

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253

Total Potential CO2 from Remaining Reserves Under Protected Areas

BILLION

TONNES

The Global Picture

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Next steps…

  • Countries can pledge non-extraction in protected areas
  • Target the involved companies
  • Build alliances for non-extraction
  • You can explore our maps and data

Add to their NDCs or other commitments

Many publicly-traded multinational corporations are involved

Partner with national and international groups to change policy.

Locate project sites, affected protected areas, and view statistics.

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Every one of these projects is an act of hypocrisy. Protecting an area with one hand, destroying it with the other.

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Ogoniland Nature Reserve, Nigeria

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Explore our data and maps

Alice McGown GIS Researcher @ LINGO alice.mcgown@leave-it-in-the-ground.org

https://protected-carbon.org