Come and join the presentation where we will discuss the problem of the threats faced by Indigenous communities living in rural and remote areas due to expanding hydrocarbon and mining industries. We will discover a context, where environmental liabilities generated by extraction practices continue to create adverse environmental and public health impacts.

The focus will be on one of the Digital Democracy’s projects implemented in the Amazon. The project was aimed at combining ‘drones’ monitoring of oil spills with mobile reporting to allow Indigenous communities to safely spread oil contamination alerts. The key question revolves around the interrogative on whether community-based monitoring systems could push the state and corporate actors to responsibly manage hazards caused by the  extractive industry. Furthermore, the case is presented with a view to inspecting whether technology can achieve a transformative change giving voice to those communities who are often silent victims. Ultimately, the debate will revolve around the potential that such projects have in creating bridges between remote communities and the outside world, enabling them to spread denounces and awareness on environmental liabilities. Yet it will be stressed that change does not come from the technology per se, but from how people use it. Therefore, a human-centred and ethical approach results in being crucial for making such monitoring technologies in the hands of Indigenous communities a positive, responsible and sustainable innovation.