Overlooked deforestation from global mining activities in the 21st century
Xiaoxin Zhang, Bin Chen, Jiafu An, Chen Lin, Peng Gong
Abstract
Mining is a major driver of deforestation, yet the full scale of its contribution to global natural forest loss and associated carbon emissions remains obscured by the incomplete inventories of mining activities. Here, we present a comprehensive global mining inventory, including 236,028 mining areas with an overall accuracy of 87.37% to quantify direct deforestation and the associated forest carbon emissions from mining activities between 2001 and 2023. Our results reveal that mining-induced deforestation is two to three times higher than previous estimates from existing datasets, accounting for 19,765 km2 of deforestation with associated emissions of 0.75 Pg CO2 over this period. Notably, over half (50.29%) of this deforestation is linked to unrecorded mining activities. These findings highlight the substantially underestimated role of mining, particularly informal and unrecorded activities, in driving global deforestation and climate change, underscoring the urgent need for improved monitoring and regulation of mining impacts on the environment across regions. The study provides a comprehensive inventory of global mining footprints, finding that mining causes higher deforestation than previously estimated, with half linked to unrecorded activities, and highlighting the underestimated environmental impacts.