Free and open access to data, maps, and mapping tools
Through this open-access global mapping portal, anyone with an internet connection can visualize current and planned energy infrastructure, and how it overlaps with biodiverse areas, Indigenous territories, protected wetlands, and other areas of social, cultural and ecological importance.
Check out our GeoStory: Oil & Gas Expansion in the Amazon: A Growing Threat to Forests and Communities
Our Mission
The Fossil Fuel Atlas project's mission is to support movements that curb fossil fuels, promote clean energy, and protect communities and ecosystems. Our platform enables users of all skill levels to create data-rich maps and communications materials that document environmental injustices, empower communities and civil society organizations, and inform policy decisions. The Atlas is a sophisticated but easy-to-use tools that turn complex spatial data into compelling narratives for communication, advocacy and action.
Our Goals
To democratise data by expanding access to cutting-edge data, maps, and mapping tools. It is aimed at addressing the social and ecological impacts of fossil fuel and related industrial systems, and opportunities for transitioning to clean energy.
To enable early and effective action through the rapid assessments of threats and preparation of data-rich communication materials uncovering the extensive, cumulative and global nature of threats, and identifying alternatives.
To support movements by equipping the widest possible range of actors – affected citizens, researchers, journalists, policymakers – to assess threats, build power and advance alternatives. All the Maps, GeoStories and other content produced on the Fossil Fuel Atlas can be displayed here, or embedded on your own sites.
To bridge science and policy in support of global movements to protect rights, conserve biodiversity, counter climate change, and accelerate the transition to clean energy.
Our Approach
Conventional risk assessment methods are data-intensive and time-consuming. Public participation in these assessments involves contending with technical reports, raising concerns well after projects have momentum. To address this, the Fossil Fuel Atlas has developed a user-friendly GIS-based platform to help rapidly identify potential threats from prospective fossil fuel and extractive sites and infrastructure. It complements traditional risk assessments and provides stakeholders with early insights into potential risks.
This approach can support scientific research, civil society efforts, litigation, and decision-making. It consolidates freely available spatial data with the aim of making it widely accessible, allowing stakeholders to identify and voice concerns backed by scientific data before projects secure funding and government support.
In summary, the main methodological steps in this process include:
Step 1 - Work with stakeholders
Work directly with stakeholders to identify threats or impacts of concern. Concerns can include legal conflicts, social and ecological threats, contributions to global threats, such as biodiversity loss or climate change, potential risk multipliers such as seismic risks, or other factors. Stakeholders should take the lead in identifying their concerns and determining how mapping and data visualisation could support their efforts and strategies.
Step 2 - Select datasets
Select the appropriate spatial datasets for the assessment, enriching the data as necessary. In light of the concerns and strategies identified, define the spatial location and draw on the datasets in the Fossil Fuel Atlas to identify the appropriate fossil fuel, energy, social and ecological datasets to examine.
Step 3 - Identify threats
Overlay fossil fuel or other extractive data with ecological and social data to identify threats. Use the Fossil Fuel Atlas to layer the datasets, produce a visual map, and refine to show specific subsets of data by attribute or geographic location.
Step 4 - Visualize with maps
Make threats and potential impacts visually explicit through maps, visualisations and other means. Change the colours, outlines, symbols and other visual elements to create visually appealing and powerful maps and data visualisations.
Step 5 - Use and impact
Assemble a final product based on intended use. Display maps and data visualisations on the Fossil Fuel Atlas and export them for use in geostories, websites, blog posts, documents and other materials.
Our Data Development Process
The Fossil Fuel Atlas consolidates large volumes of freely available spatial data into an open-access mapping portal, offering access to a wide range of fossil fuel, energy, social and ecological data sets.
Data is drawn from multiple sources including various United Nations programmes; World Database of Protected areas; Global Land Analysis and Discovery Lab; Global Mangrove Watch & Global Forest Watch; European Space Agency; NASA; individual academic articles (e.g. global croplands); and more. The Fossil Fuel Atlas is continually improving existing data sets and developing new ones to address needs identified by partners and users of the platform. Through collaboration we can continuously expand data to cover new areas. Users can also upload their own datasets directly to the platform. Explore all existing datasets here.
Our Team
The Fossil Fuel Atlas is staffed by a dedicated project team, contributors and volunteers.