Leadership Grant

Keeping fossil fuels in the ground

$55,000 awarded to Amazon Watch in
Fellow(s): Tracey Osborne
Topic(s): Climate Change, Energy Resources & Access, Environmental & Social Justice

Amazon Watch is partnering with Dr. Tracey Osborne to lead the Climate Alliance Mapping Project.  This project is a critical piece in a larger climate equity campaign with Amazon Watch, the Sierra Club, and other partners which spans the Americas and focuses on keeping fossil fuels in the ground.  For the Climate Alliance Mapping Project, Amazon Watch received a $40,000 Leadership Grant for Tracey to oversee the creation of two sets of multimedia maps, one of the Amazon region, and one of the Americas.  These maps will show existing and proposed fossil fuel reserves, biodiversity hotspots, indigenous territories, and will have corresponding digital stories in which indigenous communities will convey their experience with fossil fuel extraction.  The maps will be used by Amazon Watch in its campaign to keep fossil fuels in the ground in sensitive areas in the Amazon basin, and will be used by the Sierra Club and its partners in the larger campaign throughout the Americas.  Tracey will work through her Public Political Ecology Lab at the University of Arizona to create and house the maps on a website that is simultaneously being created with an additional Switzer grant of $15,000.

Meet the Fellows on this Project

Tracey Osborne

Tracey Osborne

2004 Fellow
Tracey Osborne is Associate Professor and Presidential Chair in the Management of Complex Systems Department at the University of California, Merced. She is also the founding director of the University of California Center for Climate Justice. Tracey’s research focuses on the social and political economic dimensions of climate change mitigation in tropical forests and the role of Indigenous Peoples, the politics of climate finance, global environmental governance, and climate equity and justice. She has worked on these issues globally with extensive field experience in Mexico and the Amazon. Tracey is a member of the Global Climate Leadership Council, a body that advises UC President Michael Drake on successful implementation of the UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative’s mission. She received her PhD from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.