Climate change is an unprecedented global human rights emergency.
The burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) emits heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are the primary current and historical cause of anthropogenic climate change; this has been settled science for decades. Global concentrations of GHGs, including carbon dioxide and methane, have reached record levels. In 2024, for the first time, the global average temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Despite commitments made under international climate agreements and repeated calls by UN officials to urgently phase out fossil fuels, government action to limit their use and production, and to curb the flow of taxpayer money to the fossil fuel industry, has been wholly inadequate. Meanwhile, the industry has been intensifying efforts to lock in profits, disinform, and exert undue influence in climate policy forums.
Without urgent action to stabilize and reduce GHG emissions, global heating will dramatically accelerate, making extreme weather events and unnatural disasters more intense and more likely, with grave human rights implications for billions of people and the critical ecosystems on which we all rely.
Amnesty International’s new research demonstrates that, in addition to irreversibly altering the climate system, the full lifecycle of fossil fuels destroys critical natural ecosystems and undermines human rights, particularly of fenceline communities (those living near fossil fuel infrastructure).
The research, as presented in this report, illustrates the ways in which fossil fuel projects feed into systemic patterns of exclusion, including through the disenfranchisement of environmental human rights defenders and communities fighting polluting infrastructure, and in some cases, outright silencing, intimidation or violence. It provides yet more evidence of the imperative for states and corporate actors to defossilize the global economy in order to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis on the enjoyment of human rights.
As this year’s host, the government of Brazil envisions that the global climate summit COP30 will be a historic forum for the meaningful participation of forest peoples, including Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities, and has called for greater multilateral climate action.
This research responds to that vision by exposing the human rights impacts of fossil fuel infrastructure on some Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities and by highlighting the resistance they are mounting. It also reveals the enormous scale, both in geographic and population terms, of the risks posed by fossil fuels throughout their lifespan. While the fossil fuel industry and its state sponsors have argued for decades that human development requires fossil fuels, the opposite is true.
Given the globalized nature of the fossil fuel economy and the fact that the atmosphere, biosphere and oceans are a global public good, multilateral action is essential to protect human rights and sustainable development from climate chaos and polluting infrastructure.