As global leaders gather in Belém, Brazil, for the COP30 climate peak, a coalition of environmental groups has raised a critical alarm about the accelerating expansion of oil painting and gas disquisition in two of the world’s most ecologically sensitive regions—the Amazon rainforest and Southeast Asia’s critical marine territories. Despite public commitments by governments to cover biodiversity hotspots and fragile ecosystems, activists say reactionary energy development continues to consolidate, hanging Indigenous communities, food security, and vital territories that serve as the earth’s natural defense against climate change.
At a press conference held on the sidelines of the climate accommodations, representatives from Earth Insight, the ARAYARA Institute, the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED), and Urgewald outlined stark substantiation of how fossil energy disquisition is lapping with defended areas and biodiversity hotspots. The groups emphasized that the issue extends beyond greenhouse gas emissions, which are at the center of climate debates at COP30. According to them, expanding oil and gas systems directly undermines Indigenous rights, disrupts original livelihoods, and jeopardizes ecosystems essential for global climate stability.
Florencia Librizzi, Deputy Director at Earth Insight, underlined this communication, noting that governments must admit the full diapason of pitfalls posed by the reactionary energy assiduity. She stressed that oil painting and gas operations not only accelerate climate change but also induce immediate detriment on original communities and jeopardize critical sources of food and culture. Her statement reverberated explosively against the background of COP30’s position—Belém, extensively known as the gateway to the Amazon and an emblematic center of global environmental tactfulness.
New mapping data presented by CEED revealed expansive imbrication between oil painting and gas conditioning and ecological hotspots. In the Amazon, roughly 25 million hectares—14 percent of crucial biodiversity areas—are now positioned within zones targeted for disquisition. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia’s Coral Triangle and the Verde Island Passage—regions activists have nominated as the “Amazon of the ocean” for their unequaled marine biodiversity—around 16 percent of oil painting and gas blocks intrude upon 210,000 square kilometers of conservation areas and 80 designated defended zones. These findings punctuate a disquieting global pattern: the most biodiverse ecosystems on land and in the ocean are decreasingly vulnerable to artificial expansion.
Activists expressed particular concern about recent developments in the Amazon, especially the permission of a drilling license for the FZA-M-59 block. Librizzi described the blessing as ruinous, advising that the design could irreversibly damage the region’s ecology while worsening the social conditions of nearby Indigenous communities. Her enterprises were echoed by Joubert Marques, a climate and geosciences critic at the ARAYARA Institute, who noted the contradiction between global and indigenous commitments to a just energy transition and the reality of expanding reactionary energy birth. He emphasized that despite the rhetoric of sustainability, new oil painting and gas conditioning continue to gain across South America, placing the Amazon in heightened jeopardy.
The activists also pointed out that the reactionary energy assiduity’s footmark isn’t confined to the Amazon receptacle. On the contrary side of the world, Southeast Asia’s marine ecosystems—home to an extraordinary collection of coral reef species, tropical peatlands, and mangrove timbers—are also facing violent pressure. CEED reported that Southeast Asia contains a third of the world’s littoral and marine territories and nearly half of all mangrove areas, making it one of the most ecologically significant regions on Earth. Yet the area continues to face grim reactionary energy expansion, including 43 gigawatts of planned coal systems and 136 gigawatts of proposed gas developments.
Avril De Torres, Deputy Executive Director of CEED, advised that numerous of these systems are located dangerously close to or directly within defended territories, conservation zones, and critical marine ecosystems. She stressed the incongruity of government pledges to guard the Verde Island Passage—a region hosting two UNESCO World Heritage spots—while contemporaneously authorizing disquisition that threatens its biodiversity. De Torres described the situation as a direct assault on both environmental stability and the well-being of original communities who depend on the ocean for their livelihood. She emphasized that guarding biodiversity isn’t only a climate obligation but a moral responsibility.
In addition to environmental and social enterprises, activists drew attention to the fiscal systems enabling these reactionary energy systems. Urgewald, which lately published a report assaying backing sources for oil painting and gas developments in both the Amazon and Southeast Asia, linked major transnational banks, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and UBS, as crucial financiers of systems within these hovered ecosystems. According to Urgewald’s findings, UBS is laboriously involved in constructing gas power shops in the Brazilian Amazon while also serving as a major investor in San Miguel Corporation, a company driving the gas expansion in the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines.
Klara Butz, an Urgewald contender, stated that despite the geographical distance between the Amazon and Southeast Asia, both regions are linked by the same fiscal channels. She argued that as long as major fiscal institutions continue to fund reactionary energy buildouts, efforts to cover biodiversity and combat climate change will remain undermined.
As COP30 continues, the activists’ communication is clear: governments and global institutions must defy not just the emigrations associated with burning fossil energies but the full range of environmental and social detriment caused by their birth. From the Amazon rainforest to Southeast Asia’s marine sanctuaries, biodiversity-rich regions face raising pitfalls unless leaders commit to limiting reactionary energy expansion and strengthening protections for ecosystems and communities.
Amazon
Biodiversity
COP30
