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Mining continues to be linked to deforestation around the world, as projects to extract steel, coal, gold and critical minerals all eat away at forests that act as vital carbon sinks and limit climate change.
Nearly 1.4 million hectares of tree cover were lost between 2001 and 2020 in areas where mining and related activities took place, analysis data from the University of Maryland by the nonprofit World Resources Institute. This is an area roughly the size of greater Los Angeles.
Representatives from nearly 200 countries gathered over the past two weeks at the UN COP16 biodiversity conference in Colombia to try to follow through on a historic agreement reached in Canada two years ago.
This defined a set of objectives including stopping the extinction of species, protecting 30% of the planet’s terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and raising 200 billion dollars per year for nature here. the end of the decade.
The deforestation trend was particularly concentrated in major mining countries, including Indonesia, Brazil and Russia, WRI found. Mining causes less deforestation than the timber industry and wildfires, but it is widespread in tropical forest areas and on lands reserved for indigenous communities.
In recent years, private finance has played a greater role in pushing businesses to minimize climate and natural risks, with banks such as HSBC introducing “no deforestation” policies for their customers, including miners and traders. in agricultural raw materials.
But the mining of essential minerals, such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earths, is booming because these products are needed for clean energy technologies, including batteries, electric vehicles and wind turbines .
Marisa Drew, head of sustainability at Standard Chartered, said there were trade-offs in the move to electrification and mining of these metals and minerals.
“All infrastructure projects are a compromise. . . The world needs to come to terms with how we can meet the enormous desire for electrification with the implications that entails,” Drew said.
Demand for minerals for clean energy technologies is expected to quadruple by the end of the decade to meet climate goals, the International Energy Agency reported in 2021. Some of this demand could be tempered by reduction and reuse strategies, the IEA added in a report this month.
Meanwhile, the first comprehensive global assessment of the planet’s trees, released at the biodiversity conference earlier this week, found that more than one in three species are at risk of extinction.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a leading scientific authority, said the loss was driven by human deforestation but also by the effects of climate change, such as sea level rise and storms.
This could make land more prone to flooding and impact animals, fungi and plants that rely on trees to thrive.
“Thriving, naturally diverse forests are essential to mitigating both climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Dave Hole of Conservation International’s Moore Center for Science. “As such, solutions to one crisis often have mutual benefits for the other. »
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