Oil production, biodiversity conservation and indigenous territories: Towards geographical criteria for unburnable carbon areas in the Amazon rainforest

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.