Climate Action Network Latin America (CANLA), representing over 70 organizations across the region, strongly condemns the Brazilian government’s willingness to auction oil blocks in the Amazon - a move that endangers climate stability, biodiversity, and Brazil’s credibility as the host of COP30.
Bonn, June 17, 2025 (PR) - Brazil is willing to put up 172 new oil blocks for auction, 68 of them in the Amazon. This move directly contradicts the country’s climate commitments and threatens irreversible harm to fragile ecosystems like the Amazon Reef, as well as to the livelihoods of coastal and forest-dependent communities.
This is not climate leadership. You cannot call for a global mutirão - a collective climate effort - while igniting a carbon bomb with the potential to release 11 billion tons of CO?. That’s more than twice Brazil’s total emissions in 2023.
We believe that Brazil has long been a key player in global climate diplomacy. But at a time when the world is looking to Brazil for leadership at COP30, this decision undermines trust, contradicts its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and puts decades of environmental credibility at risk.
We urge President Lula and his government to immediately cancel oil exploration plans in the Amazon and to uphold the principles of environmental justice, long-term development strategies, democratic accountability, and planetary responsibility.
Let Brazil lead not through rhetoric, but through action and coherence. Let the Amazon stand not as a new frontier for fossil fuels, but as a living symbol of a just, oil-free, and biodiversity-rich future. We believe you might agree with us that a liveable future needs concrete plan to leave fossil fuels in the ground.
Let COP30 mark the turning point.
Caio Victor Vieira, Climate Policy Specialist at the Talanoa Institute, said: “Opening an oil extraction frontier in the same Amazon where Brazil proudly claims to host a COP is politically incoherent, humanly disrespectful and damaging to the country’s credibility. The Brazilian Presidency must be part of the same collective effort it calls on theworld to join and transition away from fossil fuels in an orderly, just, and gradual manner, starting now.”
Anna Cárcamo, Climate Change Politics Specialist at Greenpeace Brazil, said: "This auction is completely contrary to the COP28 decision to transition away from fossil fuels. The climate crisis requires us to accelerate the decarbonisation process, not prolong it. Every additional drop of oil also increases the impact of extreme weather events, which may affect us all tomorrow, but always disproportionately harm the most vulnerable populations in the affected regions. Every drop entails enormous losses for the near future." Anna Cárcamo, Climate Change Politics Specialist at Greenpeace Brazil."
Karla Maass Wolfenson, Advocacy and Campaigns Advisor, Climate Action Network Latinamerica, said: "Opening oil blocks at the mouth of the Amazon is like detonating a bomb at the heart of global trust—precisely when multilateralism is in jeopardy. There is no time for inconsistencies or political calculations when life and the protection of the natural world we all depend on are at stake. There’s no need to recall the science or voices of Indigenous peoples and local communities, as this decision has simply chosen to ignore them. From the possible future we, as people and organizations, strive to build, these actions are not only condemnable but unacceptable."
