Climate change, territories, diversity

Group coordinator

Massimo De Marchi, PhD, professor of “Environmental Assessment and Evaluation” and "Environmental policies and ecological economics", associate professor of geography at the Department of Civil Environmental and Architectural Engineering. It deals with GIScience and participatory processes and management of environmental conflicts in complex territories with high biological and cultural diversity, just fossil fuel transition. He worked as a researcher and consultant in Italy, in Europe, Africa, Latin America. Passionate about the Amazon since 1988. Vem, vamos que esperar embora não é saber, Quem não sabe faz a hora espera acontecer. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8184-013X

Group members

Salvatore E. Pappalardo is an assistant professor at the School of Engineering, specializing in GIScience and Environmental Geography. His research focuses on extreme weather events (heatwaves) and climate justice, biodiversity, ecosystem services, Indigenous territories, and participatory GIS. He is responsible for the GIScience & Drones for Good Lab and Vice-Director of the Advanced Master in GIScience and UAS. He is responsible for several courses on digital earth and geovisualization, climate change, drone applications, GIS, and remote sensing (UASB, Quito). He collaborates with various international institutions on climate justice, biodiversity conservation, and resilient territorial development. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1546-644X
Daniele Codato, naturalist and PhD in Human and Physical Geography. He is currently affiliated with the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (ICEA) at the University of Padova, where he teaches and coordinates the educational activities of the Master’s Programme in GIScience and Remote Sensing. Before his PhD research in Peru, he gained various experiences in Latin America, beginning in Ecuador in 2008 during his Master Degree thesis in Natural Sciences, where he collaborated with an Ecuadorian NGO on sustainable development initiatives in an Indigenous community of the Ecuadorian Amazon. He later worked in Peru within the framework of the Italian National Civil Service abroad, focusing on environmental issues, particularly socio-environmental conflicts in the Peruvian Amazon, through participatory mapping projects with local communities. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0704-4041
Francesca Peroni, PhD in Historical, Geographical, Anthropological Studies, is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) fellow at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (ICEA) at the University of Padova. Her MSCA project RESTART (Urban climate justice and community participation: towards inclusive adaptation strategies) addresses climate justice in cities (Padova - Italy, Hermosillo - Mexico, Tempe - USA), focusing on heatwaves and integrating procedural, distributional, and recognitional justice dimensions. She also works on urban sustainability (soil sealing, land use change, NbS, and ecosystem services), adopting the approaches of GIScience. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2389-5612
Francesco Facchinelli, PhD candidate in Historical, Geographical, and Anthropological Studies at the University of Padua. His research focuses on the use of GIScence to support grassroots processes for climate and environmental justice, as well as agroecology as an alternative to the extractivist model. Specific case studies range from monitoring oil gas flaring and agroecological alternatives in the Ecuadorian Amazon to monitoring land consumption and heat islands in urban areas. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5740-8435
Edoardo Crescini, is a PhD candidate at the School of Civil, Environmental and Building Engineering at the University of Padua. His research employs innovative geographic technologies (GIS, drones, and remote sensing) to promote participatory processes of independent territorial monitoring. He focuses on the concept of the Plantationocene and on the neocolonial and neoliberal dynamics linked to monocultural oil palm plantations, developing possible agroecological transition plans as alternatives to the current agro-industrial model in Ecuador. His work also addresses climate justice, fossil fuel phase-out processes, and the urban impacts of the climate crisis, with particular attention to the development of proactive adaptation and mitigation policies.https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4397-6093
Daniele Vezzelli is a PhD candidate at the School of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering at the University of Padua. His research focuses on climate policies to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to promote a just transition in extractive territories, with particular attention to the Italian context. He also contributes to the World Atlas of Unburnable Carbon project of the University of Padova, applying GIS methods to identify biologically and culturally rich areas where fossil fuels should remain underground, particularly in Brazil and the Arctic. In his Master’s thesis in Natural Sciences, he analyzed geographical criteria to determine the order in which countries or subnational areas should phase out hydrocarbon production, identifying territorial priorities based on principles of equity and climate justice. https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5736-9354
Elena Secondo is the teaching assistant of the international Erasmus Mundus Joint Master on Climate Change and Diversity: Sustainable Territorial Development (CCD-STeDe), coordinated by the University of Padova. She is also in charge of the management of the project funded by the European Commission and the dissemination and communication of the EMJM program CCD-STeDe online, both through the website and social media. She provides support to the implementation of the didactic activities and is in charge of the logistic and organizational aspects of seminars (both online and in presence), events, fieldworks and summer schools.
Zsófia Anna Ghira, PhD, is a research fellow specializing in urban climate justice, with a focus on equity and inclusion in adapting to extreme weather events such as heat. She holds a PhD in Architecture and Environment and has a background in regional and environmental economics. Her work explores how cities can advance climate resilience while ensuring justice for vulnerable populations. https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7175-0526
Giuseppe Della Fera, a naturalist and territorial planner, is a research fellow at the Department of ICEA, working on topics related to the Just Transition from fossil fuels and serving as academic tutor for the Second-Level Master’s Program in GIScience and SPR. Since 2016, he has collaborated with the research group on the impacts of oil extraction, applying Unburnable Carbon approaches in contexts of high biological and cultural diversity, focusing on territorial and environmental policies, tourism, and sustainability. Since 2019, he has been responsible for the design of educational activities within the Master’s Program in GIScience and SPR, and since 2023 he has been a contract lecturer for the course “Design of Green Infrastructures”. He is also involved in organizing scientific events, as well as in research and educational outreach, communication, and dissemination through web and social media channels. https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2717-0845
Abdullah Ahmadi is a PhD candidate in Human Rights, Society & Multi-level Governance at the University of Padua. His research focuses on applying remote sensing and open-source GIS to inform urban planning and climate justice, with emphasis on land-use change, green-infrastructure planning, and climate-vulnerability mapping. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at UniPD’s Drone4Good Lab and an Environmental Geologist at Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum. https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7135-6342
Alberto Diantini, geographer and naturalist, he is currently a Post-Doc Researcher. He teaches the courses of Environmental Conflicts, Climate Justice and Social Impact Assessment, and Foundations and Didactics of Geography at the University of Padua. His research focuses on Social Impact Assessment processes and environmental conflicts in oil-producing territories, using an approach that integrates political ecology, decolonial methodologies, and autoethnographic practices. Other research lines address Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) practices and Indigenous rights, agroecology, and scenarios of climate-change adaptation and resilience in deltaic areas, with a particular focus on the Po Delta.

Francesco Ferrarese holds a degree in Geography from the University of Padua, where he has been working as a GIS specialist since 2000. He has provided GIS and data processing expertise in more than 20 research projects across various Departments of the University of Padua. His main research interests include Geomorphology, Remote Sensing, Geomorphometry, Karst Studies, Geoarchaeology, GIS analysis, and mapping.