Increasing Fossil Fuel Exploration Threatens Biodiversity Hotspots, Say Activists at COP30
Belém, Brazil — Environmental groups at the COP30 climate summit are sounding an urgent alarm over the rapid expansion of oil and gas exploration across some of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems. Despite promises from governments to protect natural areas, new data presented at the summit shows intensified fossil fuel activities in both the Amazon basin and Southeast Asia’s marine biodiversity hubs.
A coalition of environmental organizations, including Earth Insight, the ARAYARA Institute, the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development, and Urgewald, warned that these expansions threaten regions they describe as the Amazon of the ocean. This label refers to Southeast Asia’s Coral Triangle and the Verde Island Passage, areas renowned for their extraordinary marine biodiversity and vital importance to coastal communities.
During a press conference at the summit, Florencia Librizzi, Deputy Director at Earth Insight, emphasized that fossil fuel operations harm more than the climate. She stressed that oil and gas extraction directly undermines Indigenous communities, food security, and local livelihoods that depend on intact ecosystems.
New maps released by the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development reveal the extent of the overlap between fossil fuel expansion and biodiversity-rich areas. In the Amazon alone, about twenty five million hectares, roughly fourteen percent of key biodiversity zones, fall within active or planned oil and gas blocks. In Southeast Asia, sixteen percent of fossil fuel concessions in the Coral Triangle overlap with more than two hundred thousand square kilometers of conservation areas, including eighty designated protected zones.
The activists highlighted the recent approval of a drilling license for the Amazon’s FZA M fifty nine block, describing it as a dangerous precedent. Librizzi warned that the decision would be devastating for ecosystems and local communities already facing pressure from deforestation, mining, and climate change.
Belém, the host city of COP30, sits at the entrance to the Amazon and symbolizes what is at stake. Both the rainforest and the reef systems of the region increasingly face threats from new extraction projects. Joubert Marques, a climate and geosciences analyst at the ARAYARA Institute, said the new license opens the door for further exploration at a moment when the world is supposedly moving toward cleaner energy. He noted that while leaders speak of a just transition, fossil fuel expansion continues at scale across South America, placing the Amazon in ever greater peril. Corporations remain the dominant actors in this expansion, with Eneva holding the largest share of exploration areas.
The threat extends far beyond the Americas. In Southeast Asia, coastal and marine habitats that support a third of the world’s coral reef species and nearly half of global mangrove forests are under similar pressure. The Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development reported that the region still has more than forty gigawatts of coal projects and over one hundred thirty gigawatts of gas developments in the pipeline. Many of these projects lie inside or immediately adjacent to protected areas and critical ecological zones.
Avril De Torres, Deputy Executive Director of the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development, pointed to the Verde Island Passage as a striking example of these contradictions. The passage, home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites and regarded as one of the world’s most diverse marine corridors, faces simultaneous government pledges of protection and expansions of coal and gas exploration. She urged Philippine authorities and global leaders to recognize that safeguarding biodiversity is both a climate duty and a moral responsibility.
The environmental groups also brought attention to international financial institutions that bankroll fossil fuel development in these fragile regions. Urgewald’s latest research identified Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and UBS as major financiers of oil and gas projects in both the Amazon and Southeast Asia. UBS, which is involved in gas infrastructure in the Brazilian Amazon, is also one of the largest European investors in San Miguel Corporation, a company driving fossil fuel expansion in the Verde Island Passage.
According to Klara Butz, a campaigner with Urgewald, these projects share a common thread: the powerful financial backing that enables destructive operations to proceed despite local opposition and global climate goals.
Throughout the conference corridors in Belém, civil society groups staged demonstrations urging immediate protection for vulnerable ecosystems. De Torres issued a direct appeal to delegates at COP30, calling on world leaders to acknowledge the central role of fossil fuels in damaging both marine and terrestrial environments. She urged governments to declare vital biodiversity zones, including the Mekong Delta, the Coral Triangle, and the Verde Island Passage, as no go areas for any extractive or harmful industrial activities. She also called for renewed commitments to global biodiversity goals, particularly the ambition to protect thirty percent of the planet’s land and sea by 2030.
As global leaders continue negotiations in Belém, activists warn that without decisive action to curb fossil fuel expansion, the world’s richest ecosystems could face irreversible loss, with profound consequences for climate stability, human survival, and the countless species that depend on these fragile landscapes.
