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25% of the international residents dwells inside five kilometers of operational oil, gas, and coal sites, likely endangering the physical condition of more than 2 billion people as well as critical ecosystems, based on first-of-its-kind study.

Worldwide Distribution of Fossil Fuel Operations

More than 18,300 oil, gas, and coal mining locations are presently distributed throughout one hundred seventy nations worldwide, taking up a extensive territory of the world's terrain.

Closeness to extraction sites, processing plants, pipelines, and further coal and gas installations raises the risk of tumors, breathing ailments, heart disease, preterm labor, and mortality, while also creating severe dangers to water supplies and air cleanliness, and degrading terrain.

Immediate Vicinity Hazards and Future Expansion

Nearly 463 million people, encompassing 124 million children, now dwell within 1km of coal and gas locations, while another 3,500 or so proposed facilities are presently proposed or in progress that could require over 130 million further residents to face pollutants, burning, and leaks.

Nearly all active sites have created toxic hotspots, transforming adjacent populations and critical ecosystems into so-called expendable regions – severely polluted areas where economically disadvantaged and disadvantaged communities carry the unequal burden of contact to pollution.

Health and Ecological Consequences

The report outlines the harmful health impact from extraction, refining, and shipping, as well as demonstrating how spills, flares, and construction destroy unique ecological systems and compromise human rights – particularly of those dwelling close to petroleum, natural gas, and coal facilities.

The report emerges as international representatives, without the US – the biggest past producer of carbon emissions – assemble in Belem, Brazil, for the 30th annual climate negotiations amid increasing disappointment at the limited movement in ending coal, oil, and gas, which are leading to global ecological crisis and human rights violations.

"The fossil fuel industry and its state sponsors have argued for many years that human development needs fossil fuels. But it is clear that under the guise of financial development, they have instead promoted self-interest and profits without red lines, breached rights with widespread immunity, and harmed the air, biosphere, and seas."

Global Negotiations and International Pressure

Cop30 takes place as the Philippines, the North American country, and the Caribbean island are suffering from major hurricanes that were intensified by higher air and ocean heat levels, with states under mounting urgency to take decisive measures to control oil and gas firms and halt extraction, subsidies, authorizations, and consumption in order to comply with a historic judgment by the international court of justice.

In recent days, disclosures revealed how in excess of over 5.3k coal and petroleum influence peddlers have been allowed entry to the UN climate talks in the recent years, obstructing climate action while their paymasters pump historic quantities of petroleum and natural gas.

Analysis Process and Data

This data-driven research is derived from a groundbreaking location-based project by researchers who cross-referenced information on the documented sites of fossil fuel facilities sites with demographic data, and datasets on essential ecosystems, climate releases, and native communities' territories.

One-third of all functioning oil, coal mining, and gas sites overlap with one or more essential habitats such as a swamp, forest, or aquatic network that is abundant in wildlife and critical for carbon sequestration or where environmental deterioration or calamity could lead to habitat destruction.

The real international scale is possibly greater due to gaps in the reporting of oil and gas operations and restricted demographic data across nations.

Ecological Inequality and Indigenous Peoples

The findings demonstrate entrenched environmental unfairness and bias in contact to oil, gas, and coal operations.

Indigenous peoples, who comprise five percent of the world's people, are unequally exposed to health-reducing oil and gas facilities, with a sixth sites positioned on Indigenous areas.

"We face long-term battle fatigue … We literally will not withstand [this]. We were never the instigators but we have borne the brunt of all the violence."

The spread of fossil fuels has also been associated with property seizures, heritage destruction, community division, and income reduction, as well as aggression, online threats, and court cases, both penal and civil, against local representatives non-violently resisting the building of pipelines, mining sites, and further infrastructure.

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