Presentation short abstract

We analyze 70 successful fossil fuel resistance cases from the EJ Atlas, using interviews to uncover strategies, challenges, and success factors. Findings will appear in an interactive global map and an accessible storybook weaving stories together with artistic expression.

Presentation long abstract

While communities, especially in the Global South, bear the consequences of an escalating climate crisis they did not cause, fossil fuel companies continue expanding extraction. Their drilling, digging, shipping and burning rips people and their lands apart, destroys cultures and livelihoods. The history of fossil fuel extraction is a harmful one, yet history is also full of people who rose up against these fossil giants, said „no“, organized, fought back and won.

This project looks at and draws lessons from grassroots resistance that has successfully stopped fossil fuel projects. From the Ogonis fighting Shell in the 1990s to Los Angeles neighborhoods fighting urban drilling in the 2020s, we collect approximately 70 successful resistance stories on a map using data from the Environmental Justice Atlas. The map will be openly accessible through the EJ Atlas website and will enable diverse movements and actors to connect with and learn from each other. Additionally, we select ten of these cases to interview members to better understand the strategies, challenges, and conditions that led to success. These stories will be presented in a storybook that weaves together narratives, poetry and art, reflecting the creative forms of resistance that sustain many movements.

The outcome is an interactive map of possibilities and an accessible storybook designed to spark hope and solidarity across geographies especially in times of a global fossil rollback. Through this submission we hope to inform and inspire climate justice movements around the world in their fight to leave fossil fuels in the ground.