Although organic farming and agroecology are normally not associated with the use of new technologies, it’s rapid growth, new technologies are being adopted to mitigate environmental impacts of ...intensive production implemented with external material and energy inputs. GPS, satellite images, GIS, drones, help conventional farming in precision supply of water, pesticides, fertilizers. Prescription maps define the right place and moment for interventions of machinery fleets. Yield goal remains the key objective, integrating a more efficient use or resources toward an economic-environmental sustainability. Technological smart farming allows extractive agriculture entering the sustainability era. Societies that practice agroecology through the development of human-environmental co-evolutionary systems represent a solid model of sustainability. These systems are characterized by high-quality agroecosystems and landscapes, social inclusion, and viable economies. This book explores the challenges posed by the new geographic information technologies in agroecology and organic farming. It discusses the differences among technology-laden conventional farming systems and the role of technologies in strengthening the potential of agroecology. The first part reviews the new tools offered by geographic information technologies to farmers and people. The second part provides case studies of most promising application of technologies in organic farming and agroecology: the diffusion of hyperspectral imagery, the role of positioning systems, the integration of drones with satellite imagery. The third part of the book, explores the role of agroecology using a multiscale approach from the farm to the landscape level. This section explores the potential of Geodesign in promoting alliances between farmers and people, and strengthening food networks, whether through proximity urban farming or asserting land rights in remote areas in the spirit of agroecological transition. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.
Abstract
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 26 January 2021 the Court of Nueva Loja issued a historical order to ban gas flaring in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The present citizen science project played 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 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Nightfire annual datasets, which map only 24% and 33% of the sites, respectively. Seventy five 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.
The main objective of this research was to critically examine the concept of Social Licence to Operate (SLO) in an oil concession of the Ecuadorian Amazon inhabited by indigenous villages. In this ...paper we present the qualitative data of the semi-structured interviews and the household survey with village residents. The main findings revealed the important role of the involvement of communities in the decision-making processes (procedural fairness), people’s perceptions of company’s socio-environmental impacts, the management of forms of protest and social services in the communities. Particularly, the results suggested that procedural fairness and the respect of communities’ right of self-determination are the basic requisite for the application of the SLO concept in the study area.
Climate change currently represents the tip of the iceberg of the human footprint on the Biosphere, showing social and environmental impacts both on local and global scales. McGlade and Ekins (2015) ...argued that to keep the temperature from increasing by 2 °C, more than 80% of coal, 50% of gas and 30% of oil reserves must remain “unburnable” underground. Within such a global scenario, the Amazon Biome presently plays a crucial role both as a carbon sink and as a fossil fuel reserve. Secondly, the Amazon Biome, - a key region in terms of provisioning ecosystem services and biological and cultural diversity - is endangered by several threats and pressures from oil and gas activities.
In this study, the first Amazon-scale integrated spatial analysis was performed, quantifying interactions between oil operations, protected areas, and indigenous territories, and focusing on the issue of leaving fossil fuels untapped.
The general aim of the present research is to provide a spatial tool useful for geographical criteria to define potential unburnable carbon areas in highly sensitive cultural and biological areas. Specific aims are identifying and quantifying overlaps between oil exploitation elements (blocks, wells, seismic lines, pipelines) and Protected Areas for biodiversity conservation, and indigenous territories.
The results show that 10.47% of the Amazon study area is currently involved in oil and gas activities. In particular, oil blocks overlap 59.26% of the Ecuadorian Amazon, 34% of the Bolivian Amazon, and 35.77% of the Colombian Amazon. The overlaps could have a stronger effect on policymakers decisions if we consider that: a) 10.47% of the Amazon study area means that oil and gas concessions cover about 620,679 km2 of tropical ecosystems, i.e. the 6% of US territory or more than the double of UK.
•An area double of UK size is covered by hydrocarbon blocks in the Amazon study area.•35% of Bolivian and Colombian Amazon is covered by oil & gas blocks.•2784 oil and gas wells and 461,786 km of seismic are calculated in the study area.•In Peru about 24% of indigenous territories are overlapped by oil & gas blocks.•Overlaps show urgent need of geographical criteria defining unburnable carbon areas.
In the Amazon Rainforest, a unique post-carbon plan to mitigate global warming and to protect the exceptional bio-cultural diversity was experimented in 2007–2013 by the Ecuadorian government. To ...preserve the rainforest ecosystems within the Yasuní-ITT oil block, the release of 410 million metric tons of CO2 would have been avoided. The neologism “yasunization” emerged as an Amazonian narrative on “unburnable carbon” to be replicated worldwide. Considering the unburnable carbon, petroleum-associated gas flaring represents the unleakable part. Flaring is an irrational practice that consists of burning waste gases, representing not only a leak of energy but also a pollution source. The general aim of the paper is to monitor gas flaring as a tool, revealing, at the same time, the implementation of environmental technologies in the oil sector and the compliance of sustainable policies in the Amazon region and the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. Specific objectives are: (i) identifying and estimating gas flaring over seven years (2012–2018); (ii) mapping new flaring sites; iii) estimating potentially affected areas among ecosystems and local communities. We processed National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Nightfire annual dataset, based on the elaboration of imagery from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and developed a GIS-based novel simple method to identify new flaring sites from daily detections. We found that 23.5% of gas flaring sites and 18.4% of volumes of all oil industries operating in Ecuador are located within the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve (YBR). Moreover, we detected 34 additional flaring sites not included in the NOAA dataset—12 in the YBR and one in Tiputini field, a key area for biological and cultural diversity conservation. We also found that at least 10 indigenous communities, 18 populated centers and 10 schools are located in the potentially affected area. Gas flaring can be used as a policy indicator to monitor the implementation of sustainable development practices in complex territories.
The purpose of this research was to critically analyze the social license to operate (SLO) for an oil company operating in Block 10, an oil concession located in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The specific ...study area is an important biodiversity hotspot, inhabited by indigenous villages. A mixed-methods approach was used to support a deeper understanding of SLO, grounded in participants’ direct experience. Semi-structured interviews (N = 53) were conducted with village leaders and members, indigenous associations, State institutions, and oil company staff, while household surveys were conducted with village residents (N = 346). The qualitative data informed a modified version of Moffat and Zhang’s SLO model, which was tested through structural equation modelling (SEM) analyses. Compared to the reference model, our findings revealed a more crucial role of procedural fairness in building community trust, as well as acceptance and approval of the company. Procedural fairness was found to be central in mediating the relationship between trust and the effects of essential services provided by the company (medical assistance, education, house availability) and sources of livelihoods (i.e., fishing, hunting, harvesting, cultivating, and waterway quality). The main results suggested that the concept of SLO may not appropriately apply without taking into account a community’s autonomy to decline company operation. To enhance procedural fairness and respect for the right of community self-determination, companies may need to consider the following: Establishing a meaningful and transparent dialogue with the local community; engaging the community in decision-making processes; enhancing fair distribution of project benefits; and properly addressing community concerns, even in the form of protests. The respect of the free prior informed consent procedure is also needed, through the collaboration of both the State and companies. The reduction of community dependence on companies (e.g., through the presence of developmental alternatives to oil extraction) is another important requirement to support an authentic SLO in the study area.
The chapter offers an outlook on the relations among geographical information science and agroecology to disclose the 'power of maps' in agro-ecological transformative scaling up. Starting from the ...focus on the place-based approach of agroecology, the authors explore some key elements of the debate on 'mapping for change' in geography and cartography, that have a long and consolidated epistemological and empirical habit on the reflections in the key role of maps in changing the world. The chapter presents the practices and reflections of counter-mapping and critical cartography emerged in the 'era' of pre-digital maps as a tool for empowerment of weak and marginalized actors in cities and the rural areas. There is a continuity from participatory 'material' cartography to 'immaterial' participatory and critical GIS, critical geosdesign, voluntary geography, and neogeography. Despite the low interactions, mostly informal, in the last decades among the science of geographical information and agroecology, there are many areas of common interest and mutual interaction and co-operation in the quest for agroecological transitions.
The introductory chapter of the book starts with a reflection on the levels of agroecological transition to map the multiplicity of labels for sustainability in agriculture, and the different ...declinations of Agriculture 4.0 with the corresponding embodied approaches to technologies and innovation for sustainability. The approach adopted in agroecology can be defined as 'technology for all' as a dynamic combination of available tools adapted to the specific locations and cultures of myriads of agroecological small farms, going beyond the universalizing closed menu of technological supply for standardizing conventional large farms. The chapter summarizes the 'basket of options' offered by the books as flexible, appropriate, and suitable opportunities for the multiplicity of small farmers, herders, fishermen, peasants, indigenous people, and urban dwellers interested in growing directly their food, caring for humans and non-humans in safe places, and suitable for youths and elders, for women and men.
The last chapter of the book collects the challenge of finding territorial alternatives to development in the context of climate change, agroecological transition, and food sovereignty as compasses ...to navigate the uncertainty of the pandemic era. The chapter recalls the role of agroecology, either in the rural and urban context, to overcome the social and environmental impacts of conventional farming through the integrated and multi-scale approach among social and natural systems based on the rights of farmers and citizens connected in sustainable and sovereign food networks. The local knowledge systems of constituting the unique place-based coevolving experiences of agroecology are involved in the co-creating of knowledge also through technological appropriation of the new commons of geographical information and technology. Many emancipatory processes are ongoing in many parts of the world, from the Amazon rainforest supporting the struggle of indigenous groups for safe territories to urban peripheries and conventional farming areas of the global north.
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