Oil, gas and mining concessions overlap 105 million hectares of protected and conserved land worldwide, according to a new report that questions whether the global pledge to protect 30 per cent of the planet by 2030 is being met with real environmental integrity.
The report, High-Integrity 30×30 Implementation, was produced by the non-profit Earth Insight and the World Commission on Protected Areas ahead of COP17, the UN biodiversity summit now under way in Yerevan, Armenia. It finds that about 62 million hectares of protected areas overlap oil and gas blocks, and a further 43 million hectares overlap mining concessions.
Countries adopted the so-called 30×30 target in 2022 under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, committing to protect 30 per cent of the world’s land and water by 2030. With roughly three years remaining, governments have formally committed only about 23 per cent, and the new report argues that even those commitments often fail to exclude extractive activity.
In the Amazon, more than 40 per cent of terrestrial Key Biodiversity Areas remain unprotected, and at least 19 per cent of all KBAs face threats from oil and gas blocks, with up to 15 per cent threatened by mining. Cambodia presents a starker case: 97 per cent of its remaining undisturbed tropical forest sits inside protected areas on paper, yet 71 per cent of that forest is threatened by oil and gas concessions and 21 per cent by mining.
Some progress, just not enough
Globally, protected land coverage has risen by about 1.1 percentage points since 2022, equivalent to roughly 1.3 million square kilometres, while protected marine coverage has grown by about 1.7 percentage points, around 6 million square kilometres. More than 50 countries and territories now report at least 30 per cent terrestrial coverage, and 23 report marine and coastal coverage above that threshold, figures the report’s authors say prove the target is achievable but not yet on a path to being met everywhere by 2030.
Not every recent decision has gone against conservation. Colombia committed in 2025 to ban new oil, gas and large-scale mining across its Amazon territory, a pledge covering more than 48 million hectares. Ghana revoked a regulation that had permitted mining inside its forest reserves. The report cites both as examples of what it calls high-integrity implementation, in contrast to protection that exists only on a map.
“30×30 is no longer only about protecting more places; it is about protecting the right places, in the right way,” said Tyson Miller, Earth Insight’s founder and executive director. Brian O’Donnell of Campaign for Nature, who was involved in the study, said governments attending COP17 should “require extractive industries that profit from nature to help pay for its protection,” rather than leaving conservation costs to be met from public budgets alone.
A measurement problem as much as a policy one
The authors recommend that governments measure progress toward 30×30 by biodiversity outcomes rather than by hectares claimed on paper, treat 30 per cent as a floor rather than a target, and prioritise Key Biodiversity Areas and intact ecosystems over easier, less valuable land. Juan Carlos Jintiach Arcos of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities argued that Indigenous Peoples and local communities, who already steward much of the land under threat, are best placed to manage it well, saying communities “know how to care for these territories” when given the authority to do so.
The findings add pressure to COP17 negotiators, who face questions this week about whether new funding mechanisms, including the still-nascent Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, can direct money toward enforcement and local stewardship fast enough to close the gap between declared protection and protection that actually excludes drilling and digging. A separate analysis released the same week found that most biodiversity aid still bypasses the communities actually living on the land being protected, a pairing that suggests the finance gap and the enforcement gap are, in practice, the same problem viewed from different sides.
