Protected tropical ecosystems around the world face growing pressure from mining concessions and oil and gas exploration blocks, according to research released on 8 October 2026. The findings highlight a major challenge for countries that have committed to protecting 30% of the planet’s land, freshwater and oceans by 2030: designating an area for conservation does not necessarily protect it from industrial development.
The research, led by the environmental organisation Earth Insight, found that oil and gas blocks overlap with more than 61 million hectares of protected areas across major tropical ecosystems. Mining concessions overlap with a further 42.7 million hectares. The oil and gas area is nearly the size of France, illustrating the scale of the pressure facing places intended to safeguard forests, wildlife and other forms of biodiversity.
The findings come ahead of the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, known as COP17, scheduled to begin in Yerevan, Armenia, on 18 October. The meeting is expected to include a global assessment of progress towards the biodiversity targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022.
Under that framework, countries committed to conserving at least 30% of the world’s land, inland waters and marine areas by 2030. However, Earth Insight’s analysis suggests that the headline percentage can give an incomplete picture of conservation progress if protected areas remain exposed to oil extraction, mining and other forms of industrial activity.
Madhu Rao, chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said the global agreement was a significant achievement, but warned that the emphasis on measuring the area designated for protection had overshadowed questions about the quality of that protection.
To say that a third of the Earth’s surface needs to be protected, and for that to be agreed upon by consensus by 196 countries, was a big deal, but the focus has just gone on that quantitative element.
Earth Insight said existing national commitments could raise the proportion of land and sea under conservation to about 23% by 2030, still below the 30% target. Even if countries close that gap by designating additional areas, the research suggests the target could remain inadequate if the resulting protected zones are still vulnerable to industrial development.
The distinction matters because conservation depends on more than drawing boundaries on a map. Tropical forests store carbon, regulate water flows and provide habitats for species that may not survive elsewhere. Rivers, wetlands and coastal ecosystems also support fisheries, local livelihoods and the ecological connections between land and sea. Mining and oil and gas development can damage these systems through land clearance, pollution, roads, infrastructure and the expansion of industrial activity beyond the immediate project site.
Earth Insight used spatial analysis to compare major tropical ecosystems with areas allocated to extractive industries. The overlap does not mean every concession is already operating, or that every area identified has been licensed for extraction. Some projects remain at an early stage, making decisions about permits and land use particularly important.
Tyson Miller, executive director of Earth Insight, said governments still had an opportunity to reconsider many of the concessions identified by the research.
A majority of those concessions haven’t been licensed yet. Certainly plenty are, but that means there’s an opportunity for countries to remove those concessions.
That distinction creates a potential route for governments to prevent some environmental damage before it occurs. Removing or relocating concessions in sensitive areas could reduce conflicts between industrial development and conservation commitments. However, this would require governments to account for biodiversity risks when granting exploration rights and approving projects, rather than treating protected-area boundaries and resource development plans as separate policy issues.
The research also points to damage that has already occurred. In Cambodia, Phnom Prich wildlife sanctuary lost 10,000 hectares to make way for an open-pit gold mine, according to the Reuters report on the findings. The example illustrates how the legal designation of a conservation area does not always prevent industrial activities from changing the landscape.
Cambodia’s remaining undisturbed tropical forest is largely located within designated protected zones, with 97% falling inside them. Yet the research found that 21% of that forest was threatened by mining and 71% by oil and gas development. The figures show how multiple forms of resource extraction can place pressure on the same conservation landscape.
Marine biodiversity faces related challenges. More than 40% of key marine biodiversity areas in the Amazon region remain unprotected, while the proportion exceeds 50% in Southeast Asia and Central America, according to the findings. These gaps matter because biodiversity protection on land does not automatically secure the coastal waters and marine habitats connected to it.
The pressure may increase as countries seek to strengthen energy security and secure access to natural resources. Rao said Bangladesh had already invited companies to bid for oil blocks in biodiversity-rich waters in the Bay of Bengal, highlighting the tension between energy development and the protection of sensitive ecosystems.
Given the energy crisis that we are in at the moment, many countries are taking the steps forward, getting into oil extraction in a way they hadn’t done before.
Energy security is an important concern for governments, but expanding extraction into sensitive areas can create environmental costs that persist long after individual projects end. Depending on the location and type of development, these costs may include habitat fragmentation, contamination, disruption of wildlife populations and pressure on communities that depend on healthy forests, rivers and coastal waters.
The issue also complicates the relationship between economic development and environmental protection. Mining provides materials used in construction, manufacturing and energy technologies, while oil and gas remain important sources of energy for many economies. Yet the benefits of resource extraction do not remove the need to assess where projects are located, how their impacts are managed and whether less damaging alternatives are available.
Earth Insight described its findings as likely to be conservative because the analysis did not capture the full range of pressures affecting ecosystems. The mapped overlap should therefore be understood as an indication of potential exposure, rather than a complete measure of actual environmental damage.
For governments preparing for COP17, the challenge is to move beyond counting hectares and demonstrate that protected areas are effectively safeguarded. That means reviewing existing concessions, preventing incompatible industrial activity in ecologically important locations and ensuring that new resource projects are assessed against biodiversity commitments before approvals are granted.
The decisions are particularly important where concessions have not yet been licensed. In those cases, governments may still be able to avoid future conflicts without having to reverse established operations. Where extraction is already taking place, stronger monitoring, enforcement, rehabilitation and pollution controls may reduce some impacts, although damage to complex tropical ecosystems can be difficult to reverse.
The research raises a central question for the global conservation agenda: can countries meet the 30% target by 2030 if large areas counted as protected remain open to activities that threaten the ecosystems they were designated to preserve?
The answer will depend not only on how much land and ocean governments designate for conservation, but also on whether those commitments influence decisions about mining, oil and gas development. Without that connection, the global target risks becoming a measure of protected-area coverage rather than a reliable indicator of how much nature is actually being protected.