- On Oct. 7, a network of more than 900 lawmakers presented the results of a parliamentary investigation into the phaseout of fossil fuels in the Amazon at the Brazilian National Congress in Brasília.
- The report by Parliamentarians for a Fossil-Free Future links fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon to deforestation, ecosystem fragmentation, pollution from spills and toxic waste, community displacement, health problems and violence from armed groups.
- MPs from five Amazonian countries — Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia — have presented law proposals in their national parliaments to halt the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon region of their countries. But the level of ambition varies across nations, with countries still relying heavily on extractive industries.
BOGOTÁ, Colombia and SÃO PAULO, Brazil — On Oct. 7 in Brazil’s National Congress in Brasília, lawmakers, Indigenous leaders and civil society representatives gathered to present a global parliamentary investigation into the effort to phase out fossil fuels in the Amazon. The investigation, led by Parliamentarians for a Fossil-Free Future, a network of more than 900 lawmakers from 96 countries, resulted in a report, which documents the impacts of fossil fuel activities in the Amazon, including deforestation, pollution and social conflicts, and proposes how to move toward a fossil-free Amazon.
Prior to presenting the report, parliamentarians from Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador put forward bills in their national legislatures to stop fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon regions of their countries. A parliamentarian in Bolivia presented a bill along the same lines on Oct. 7, following the release of the report.
It is the first time parliamentarians have united in a call for a no-expansion zone for fossil fuels in the Amazon, presenting law proposals in five of the Amazon’s nine countries. The parliamentarians hope COP30 in Belém will put a special focus on the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, as a key piece in addressing global climate change. Yet, fossil fuel extraction remains central to many Amazon economies, with countries continuing to invest heavily in petroleum projects.
Oil and gas fuel the Amazon’s crisis
Oil and gas exploration covers about 1.3 million square kilometers (more than 500,000 square miles) in the Amazon — roughly double the size of France. There are 871 oil and gas blocks, both onshore and offshore, in the Amazon, of which 68% are in the study or bidding phase. If these projects are developed, the report states, oil and gas exploration and production could more than double.
The United States is the main destination for Amazonian crude, with almost half of traceable Amazonian oil exports going to California refineries. Ten banks provide 63% of all petroleum financing in the Amazon, with two-thirds coming from North America and Europe. Despite massive public bailouts for Latin American state oil firms, the report finds that just 5% of comparable funds go toward repairing damaged ecosystems or supporting affected communities.
Since the 1990s, the Amazon’s carbon storage has plummeted by about 73%, from 1.5 billion tons per year to roughly 400 million tons today. According to one study, the Amazon has already lost 13% of its original forest cover. The MPs’ report warns that if vegetation loss reaches 25%, the Amazon could emit 300 million tons of CO2 annually, instead of absorbing 400 million tons, “making the Paris Agreement’s goals unattainable”.
Since 2013, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its Fifth Assessment Report, and later in the Sixth Report in 2021, science has been categorical in stating that the burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of climate change, says Gisela Hurtado Barboza, senior Amazonia campaigner at Stand.earth, an environmental advocacy organization. “What is lacking is not scientific evidence, but political will,” she adds.
The report underscores that fossil fuel extraction brings deforestation, fragmentation of fragile ecosystems, air pollution, water and soil contamination from oil spills, leaks and toxic waste, displacement of local communities, health issues, social conflicts and violence from armed groups, including attacks on environmental defenders. Halting fossil fuel extraction is critical to safeguarding the Amazon biome and tackling one of the main sources of CO2 emissions, the report says.
“Oil catalyzes corruption and dependence, stifles diversification of economies and definitely does not help poverty reduction,” says Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch.
A new proposal
Many initiatives are arising ahead of COP30 in Brazil this November, but the parliamentarian initiative brings something new and potentially very powerful, various sources have told Mongabay.
“I haven’t seen any other initiative that brings parliamentarians together in this way,” says Ruth Luque Ibarra, an MP for the Cuzco department who presented Peru’s law proposal. “We’re interested in sparking a continent-wide debate that centers on the Amazon and its global significance.”
Discussing an end to fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon in several national parliaments simultaneously is an important and novel step, says Juan Carlos Losada, the MP who promoted the initiative in Colombia. “The Amazon knows no borders. Solutions must be approached systematically, not in a fragmented way,” he says.
Iván Valente, an MP behind the law proposal in Brazil, says the debate, so far limited to socioenvironmental activism and a few intellectual circles, needs a broader discussion. “Since there was a similar project being discussed in Colombia, we decided to propose something similar in Brazil,” he says.
Miller is enthusiastic and supportive of the initiative. He says Indigenous people have been talking about the need to leave oil in the ground for more than 30 years, and civil society organizations have echoed that call. “So, for parliamentarians to have that focus is very exciting, because it’s a very important sector politically,” he says.
Ambition varies across the region, from Peru, where Luque Ibarra says the initiative’s main aim is to “generate a public debate,” to Colombia, which some hope could become the first country to end fossil fuel extraction in its Amazon region. But Miller warns that politics could pose challenges to the future of the proposals, as four of the five countries will hold elections over the next year.
Pessimism in Peru
Initially, the law proposal in Peru sought to end oil and gas extraction in 20 years, but Indigenous leaders protested, arguing they could not wait two decades amid severe health problems, increasing crime and deep social insecurity, all of which they blamed on the petroleum and mining industry. In response, Luque Ibarra is now calling for an immediate stop to extraction.
With 831 documented oil spills in the northern Peruvian Amazon and no known cases of full cleanups, Luque Ibarra stresses that proper remediation is a key demand for Indigenous communities. Olivia Bisa Tirko, president of the Chapra Nation in the Loreto department in Peru, is one of the Indigenous people who has suffered from an oil spill without remediation. In September 2022, her community experienced “the worst situation ever in the history of the Chapra Nation” after an oil spill by the state-owned petroleum company, Petroperú. Bisa filed six complaints but says the company ignored and criminalized her and others who protested.
Like many Indigenous people, Bisa sees stopping fossil fuels in the Amazon as a life-or-death matter. When Mongabay asks how she got involved in the fight against fossil fuels, she says, “It is not about getting involved, it’s about surviving.” She explains that Indigenous people are “defenders of life” because “protecting water, forest, rivers and biodiversity is protecting life. … No politician, no bank owner, no owner of a petroleum project can live in space. We all live from Earth, we all eat what Earth produces and we all drink the same freshwater,” she says.
Bisa’s fight to protect life brought on threats against herself and her children. She says she has been criminalized, insulted and discriminated against based on her gender. “They use all possible tactics,” she says. Today she wears a bulletproof vest when traveling through certain territories. Bisa says Indigenous environmental defenders “are the most persecuted, even eliminated,” but insists on continuing the fight. “We don’t want more petroleum, we don’t want to sacrifice more life,” she says.
Peru’s petroleum industry is relatively small — in 2024, crude output was around 41,000 barrels per day. “Peru is not an oil-producing country. Domestic production does not meet internal demand,” Hurtado says. However, nearly all the country’s natural gas is concentrated in the Amazon region, making it an important area, according to Diego Rivera Rivota, a senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
Passing the law in Peru could be difficult, given corruption, authoritarianism and the influence of illicit economies, Miller says.
Luque Ibarra recognizes the government’s “extractivist outlook” as the biggest obstacle to new law. “I don’t think this will materialize into a law,” she says, but she hopes it will drive debate ahead of next year’s elections. She also thinks Colombia has higher chances of producing change.
Colombia taking lead
Colombia could lead the protection of the Amazon, the report says, as the only Amazonian country that has proposed an end to new petroleum licenses. Its leftist president, Gustavo Petro, has also vowed to increase investment in renewable energy projects and is pushing for a ban on fracking.
“In Colombia, we have an opportunity. If there’s a country where this can happen, it’s Colombia,” says Losada, the MP behind the law proposal in the country. He highlights that the proposal may not be as hard to push in Colombia due to its relatively low oil and gas production in the Amazon. Rivera Rivota explains that Colombian crude output has already declined (by about 22% in just over a decade, from 990,000 barrels daily in 2014 to 773,000 barrels daily in 2024), partly due to a natural decline in existing reserves and limited investment in exploration.
Yet, Losada says Petro’s ban on new oil and gas drilling contracts “is nothing more than a moratorium, because he didn’t leave any regulation that would give continuity to that policy.” Losada insists legal changes must be made before Petro’s government ends in August 2026. According to Miller, Petro has had a strong discourse against fossil fuels, but implementation has been challenging, while Colombia still allows for petroleum exploration under existing contracts.
In September, Colombia’s acting Minister of Environment, Irene Vélez, announced she will propose restrictions on mining and fossil fuels in the Amazon ahead of COP30. Losada supports this, but says a law going through four debates in Congress will be more durable than an executive action. Miller agrees that a stronger legal base could help ensure a fossil-free Amazon even if governments change.
Indigenous communities in Colombia have had some success against fossil fuel projects, experts say. Ingry Paola Mojanajinsoy, the legal representative of the Indigenous Association of Cabildos Inga in the department of Putumayo, is one of the environmental defenders opposing fossil fuel projects on her lands. “We defend our rights; we defend our life which is the land,” she says. She says she believes preventing fossil fuel extraction is part of that work.
Losada predicts it will be hard to pass the law proposal through Congress because key parliamentary commissions are lobbied by the oil and mining sectors, and many lawmakers are close to extractive industries. Yet, he insists, “Colombia is the country where we have the biggest chance.”
Brazil on a wavering course
In Brazil, Valente’s bill would prohibit new oil and gas exploration blocks in the Brazilian Amazon and require companies already operating in the region to develop environmental and social recovery plans. It also calls for a National Energy Transition Fund for the Amazon, financed by fossil fuel revenues and international cooperation.
Fifty-two percent of fossil fuel projects (451 blocks on and offshore) in the Amazon are in Brazil, the parliamentary report says. Rivera Rivota explains that while across the region oil production is declining and prices are stagnating, this trend excludes Brazil, Argentina and Guyana. Experts say the Brazilian Amazon holds vast untapped oil reserves — as many as 60 billion barrels, which, if extracted, could release 24 billion tons of CO2, exceeding Brazil’s total emissions over the past 11 years.
On June 17, Brazil’s national oil regulator held an auction for 172 oil and gas blocks, including on Indigenous lands, although about 80% were not sold. One month later, Congress approved a “devastation bill” that eased environmental licensing for projects dubbed “strategic,” including oil exploration along the Amazon coast.
As COP30 approaches, there is a “very strong contradiction […] between pro-climate action and high-ambition discourses on one hand, and then concrete actions by the Lula [President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] government on the other,” Miller says.
“At no point has the government worked on any proposal in this direction, which is why I consider it so important to encourage debate in Parliament,” Valente tells Mongabay. “The National Congress and President Lula’s government have very different agendas, but when it comes to the expansion of oil activities, they converge. I don’t see any space right now for the project to be voted on. Only with popular pressure will we be able to approve a proposal like this,” Valente says. He adds that politicians from the north of Brazil mostly oppose his law proposal, as they see oil exploration as an opportunity to reduce poverty.
If Brazil moves forward with oil exploration in the Amazon, “it would be a disaster,” Valente says.
Ecuador tones down ambition
On July 15, Rosa Cecilia Baltazar Yucailla, MP in Ecuador’s National Assembly, submitted a proposal to prohibit new oil, gas and mining projects in the Ecuadorian Amazon. While in Peru, Luque Ibarra set her ambitions high, Baltazar aims for a pragmatic compromise. “We’re going to adjust the proposal so that it doesn’t clash too much. It’s a strategic proposal,” she says.
According to her, it is countries like the U.S., Canada and other developed states that should help pay for the protection of the Amazon, in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity. She assures critics that the proposal seeks an energy transition but will not terminate existing oil, gas and mining contracts.
Baltazar recognizes that the executive branch, particularly the Ministry of Mines and Energy, as well as companies, are likely to block the proposal.
While Ecuador was once a role model in the region, the country is now going backward, Miller says. He is referring to the state’s failure to comply with a 2023 referendum in which 59% of Ecuadorians voted to limit drilling in the Yasuní National Park, the country’s largest protected area. Ecuador’s Constitutional Court gave the government one year to comply with the referendum result and shut down oil operations in the park. In September 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that continued drilling violated Indigenous rights and ordered the closure of oil wells by March 2026. Despite these rulings, the state-run company PetroEcuador continues to operate in the area.
Meanwhile, Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy and Mines plans to auction the rights for 49 oil and gas projects in the Amazon, worth more than $47 billion. Indigenous communities, led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, are taking to the streets in Ecuador to protest against the government. One of the protesters is Juan Carlos Ruiz, president of the Sapara Nation in Ecuador. “We want to defend the Amazon, because that is our source of life,” he says during a phone call with Mongabay.
Bolivia’s bid
In Bolivia, MP Cecilia Requena Zárate presented a bill to the presidency of the Bolivian Senate on Oct. 7 to stop new hydrocarbon activities in the Bolivian Amazon. The bill also seeks to prohibit expanding current exploitation areas and the renewal of oil and gas contracts in the Amazon. It also seeks to prohibit fracking in the Amazon biome and mandate a remediation plan to ensure environmental repair from fossil fuels.
In a written answer to Mongabay, Requena Zárate says it will be difficult to pass the bill, but the need for an energy transition in Bolivia is becoming “inevitable and urgent” as petroleum production has declined and contributed to a fiscal crisis in Bolivia.
“This phase is part of the complex, but essential process of socializing and enriching the bill with key actors,” Requena Zárate writes. If the government continues its extractive expansion strategy, it is likely to propose major modifications or even recommend turning down the initiative, Requena says. Yet, she also sees a scenario where the government strengthens the energy transition and Amazon protection. While fossil fuel extraction in Bolivia has been concentrated outside the Amazon biome, the bill can help push important debates about the country’s future energy planning, she says.
A step closer?
The feasibility of these bills varies widely, but lawmakers hope their alliance will bring the Amazon closer to a fossil-free future. Bisa says she is hopeful that COP30 in Brazil will bring results and that politicians must remember “they are negotiating about millions of lives.”
According to Losada, the fight to stop fossil fuels in the Amazon is likely to be a long one, but “the climate clock goes against us.”
The initiative will face opposition not just from the powerful oil industry, but also from investors in the industry, as well as some government, media and even transnational criminal organizations that benefit from extorting oil companies or illegally tapping their pipelines, Miller says. “There are many reasons not to trust in the U.N. climate process to deliver the results we need,” he adds.
“I’d like to think the parliamentarian initiative could be used as a concrete example for a global arrangement,” Miller says, although he doesn’t think that is very likely. Yet, he sees it as necessary. “We cannot give up; for my kids, we simply cannot give up.”
Banner image: Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler.
Citation:
Flores, B. M., Montoya, E., Sakschewski, B., Nascimento, N., Staal, A., Betts, R. A., … Hirota, M. (2024). Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system. Nature. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06970-0
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