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A quarter of the international people lives less than 5km of functioning coal, oil, and gas sites, possibly risking the health of more than two billion individuals as well as vital environmental systems, according to pioneering research.

Global Spread of Oil and Gas Sites

In excess of eighteen thousand three hundred oil, natural gas, and coal facilities are currently located throughout 170 nations around the world, covering a extensive expanse of the planet's terrain.

Nearness to extraction sites, refineries, pipelines, and other fossil fuel operations increases the danger of malignancies, lung diseases, cardiac problems, preterm labor, and fatality, while also creating grave threats to water sources and air cleanliness, and harming terrain.

Close Proximity Dangers and Proposed Expansion

Approximately 463 million people, encompassing one hundred twenty-four million children, presently reside less than one kilometer of fossil fuel operations, while an additional 3.5k or so new sites are presently proposed or being built that could compel over 130 million additional residents to face fumes, gas flares, and accidents.

Most operational operations have established contamination hotspots, transforming adjacent communities and vital environments into so-called expendable regions – heavily contaminated locations where poor and disadvantaged communities carry the disproportionate load of exposure to contaminants.

Health and Natural Effects

The study outlines the harmful health consequences from mining, processing, and transportation, as well as demonstrating how leaks, flares, and building damage irreplaceable ecological systems and undermine civil liberties – especially of those dwelling close to petroleum, natural gas, and coal mining infrastructure.

It comes as global delegates, excluding the US – the greatest past source of greenhouse gases – meet in Belem, Brazil, for the thirtieth climate negotiations in the context of rising concern at the lack of progress in phasing out oil, gas, and coal, which are causing environmental breakdown and human rights violations.

"The fossil fuel industry and its state sponsors have maintained for many years that economic growth requires coal, oil, and gas. But research shows that masked as financial development, they have rather served profit and earnings unchecked, violated liberties with near-complete immunity, and damaged the climate, natural world, and seas."

Environmental Talks and International Demand

The environmental summit takes place as the Philippines, Mexico, and Jamaica are suffering from extreme weather events that were intensified by increased atmospheric and sea temperatures, with nations under mounting demand to take decisive measures to control oil and gas corporations and stop mining, government funding, licenses, and use in order to adhere to a significant decision by the international court of justice.

In recent days, reports showed how more than over 5.3k fossil fuel industry advocates have been allowed access to the international environmental negotiations in the recent years, obstructing climate action while their employers pump record quantities of oil and natural gas.

Analysis Methodology and Data

This data-driven research is derived from a groundbreaking geospatial effort by experts who analyzed data on the identified positions of oil and gas facilities sites with demographic information, and records on critical environments, greenhouse gas releases, and Indigenous peoples' land.

A third of all functioning petroleum, coal, and natural gas locations coincide with several key habitats such as a wetland, forest, or waterway that is abundant in biodiversity and critical for carbon sequestration or where natural decline or catastrophe could lead to habitat destruction.

The actual global scope is likely larger due to omissions in the reporting of fossil fuel operations and restricted population data throughout countries.

Ecological Injustice and Indigenous Peoples

The data demonstrate entrenched environmental injustice and discrimination in proximity to oil, natural gas, and coal mining operations.

Indigenous peoples, who represent one in twenty of the international people, are disproportionately subjected to life-shortening coal and gas infrastructure, with a sixth sites located on Indigenous areas.

"We endure intergenerational resistance weariness … Our bodies won't survive [this]. We have never been the initiators but we have borne the impact of all the violence."

The spread of coal, oil, and gas has also been associated with property seizures, traditional loss, population conflict, and economic hardship, as well as aggression, online threats, and lawsuits, both penal and civil, against community leaders peacefully opposing the building of pipelines, extraction operations, and other facilities.

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