Overlooked deforestation from global mining activities in the 21st century
Xiaoxin Zhang1, Bin Chen2,3, Jiafu An4,5
1Future Urbanity & Sustainable Environment (FUSE) Lab, Division of Landscape Architecture, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Nature Communications
|December 21, 2025
Summary
Mining activities drive significant global deforestation and carbon emissions, with unrecorded mining causing over half of the forest loss. Improved monitoring and regulation are urgently needed to address these underestimated environmental impacts.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Forestry
- Climate Science
Background:
- Mining is a significant, yet underestimated, driver of global deforestation.
- Incomplete inventories of mining activities obscure the full scale of forest loss and carbon emissions.
- Previous estimates of mining-induced deforestation are likely to be substantially lower than reality.
Purpose of the Study:
- To create a comprehensive global mining inventory to quantify direct deforestation and associated carbon emissions.
- To assess the contribution of mining activities to natural forest loss between 2001 and 2023.
- To highlight the role of unrecorded mining activities in deforestation and climate change.
Main Methods:
- Development of a global mining inventory encompassing 236,028 mining areas.
- Accuracy assessment of the mining inventory at 87.37%.
- Quantification of direct deforestation and associated forest carbon emissions (CO2) from mining activities.
Main Results:
- Mining activities caused 19,765 km² of deforestation and 0.75 Pg CO2 emissions from 2001-2023.
- Mining-induced deforestation is 2-3 times higher than previously estimated.
- Over 50% of mining-related deforestation is linked to unrecorded mining activities.
Conclusions:
- The role of mining, especially informal and unrecorded activities, in global deforestation and climate change is substantially underestimated.
- Urgent need for improved monitoring and regulation of mining impacts on the environment.
- Findings underscore the critical link between mining practices and global forest cover dynamics.
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