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Spatial distribution of mining and ape density. Bivariate choropleth showing the relationship between mining density (using 50-km buffers around mining locations) and ape density in (A) West Africa (operational = 18.4%; preoperational = 81.6%), in (B) central Africa (operational = 8.3%; preoperational = 91.7%), and in (C) east Africa (operational = 12.2%; preoperational = 87.8%). each color change indicates a 20% quintile change in mining and ape density. lower bounds for both mining and ape density are indicated in the color matrix.
Source publication
The rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals. In 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), seven major economies formed an alliance to enhance the sustainability of mining these essential decarbonization minerals. However, there is a scarcity of st...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... broadly coincided with operational and preoperational mining areas (mining locations and their 50-km buffers) throughout most of the ape range in West Africa, in Gabon, southern and western Republic of Congo (from here on "Congo") and southern Cameroon in Central Africa, and in Uganda along the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (Fig. 2). Here, it is important to note that although artisanal mining poses a serious threat to apes and other wildlife in and around protected areas [e.g., (38)], it was not included in this analysis for reasons described in the methods. Central Africa included the largest percentage of areas with high ape densities outside mining areas ...
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... areas (63%), followed by East (20%), and West Africa (14%), i.e., areas potentially not threatened by mining ( fig. S1). The most critical areas, i.e., those with relatively high ape densities (0.16 to 6.07 apes/km 2 , median = 0.3) and moderate to high mining densities (3 to 42 mining areas/km 2 ; median = 3.8) are currently not protected ( fig. ...
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... results indicate that the extent of the potential threats of mining on apes in Africa has been grossly underestimated. In many instances and throughout their range in Africa, preoperational and operational mining areas coincide with areas of high importance to apes, where many of these overlapping areas currently lack adequate protection measures (Fig. 2). Although DRC was not included in our analyses, there is evidence that mining has had significant impacts on the Eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and Grauer's gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) populations inside and outside protected areas, supporting our results. In particular, Plumptre et al. (46) uncovered a ...
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... to compensate for residual impact. Investing in increased protection might be more feasible where high ape densities exist outside of mining areas. Alternatively, aggregated offset strategies could focus on contributing to existing protected areas to improve their effectiveness (e.g., by financially investing in management activities and staff) ( fig. ...
Citations
... In our context, the 'human footprint' refers to a composite measure of various anthropogenic activities, such as habitat conversion, hunting and overexploitation of natural resources, that impact ecosystems (Benítez-López et al. 2019;Ceballos et al. 2017;Junker et al. 2024;Laurance et al. 2012;Mu et al. 2022;Sanderson et al. 2002;Selier et al. 2015). These activities affect mammalian community composition, including species richness and diversity, the presence of threatened species, as well as the structural composition related to trophic guilds and body mass distribution (Brodie et al. 2015;Chillo and Ojeda 2012;Jones et al. 2019;Mu et al. 2022;Tucker et al. 2021;Vanthomme et al. 2013). ...
The diversity and composition of mammal communities are strongly influenced by human activities, though these relationships may vary across broad scales. Understanding this variation is key to conservation, as it provides a baseline for planning and evaluating management interventions. We assessed variation in the structure and composition of Afrotropical medium and large mammal communities within and outside protected areas, and under varying human impact. We collected data at 512 locations from 22 study sites in 12 Afrotropical countries over 7 years and 3 months (2011–2018) with 164,474 camera trap days in total. Half of these sites are located inside protected areas and half in unprotected areas. The sites are comparable in that they all harbor at least one great ape species, indicating a minimum level of habitat similarity, though they experience varying degrees of human impact. We applied Bayesian Regression models to relate site protection status and the degree of human impact to mammal communities. Protected area status was positively associated with the proportion of all threatened species, independent of the degree of human impact. Similarly, species richness was associated with area protection but was more sensitive to human impact. For all other attributes of the mammal communities, the pattern was more complex. The influence of human impact partially overrides the positive effects of protected area status, resulting in comparable mammal communities being observed both within protected areas and in similarly remote locations outside these areas. We observed a common pattern for large carnivores, whose probability of occurrence declined significantly with increasing human impact, independent of site protection status. Mammal communities benefit from sustainability measures of socio‐economic context that minimize human impact. Our results support the notion that conservation of mammalian species can be achieved by reducing human impact through targeted conservation measures, adopting landscape‐level management strategies, fostering community engagement, and safeguarding remote habitats with high mammal diversity.
... The classification of mining threats by the IUCN includes many dimensions of impacts that are not accurately represented by the area of a mine. For example, the IUCN includes pressures from the exploration and discovery phases, which are known to impact biodiversity far from where the project development may occur (Junker et al. 2024). Such pressures, often in the form of noise pollution, removal of vegetation, blasting and drilling, can be identified as impacts to biodiversity long before a mining area can be identified (which requires it to be in the extraction or processing phases, Maus et al. 2022). ...
... Lastly, the current overview of mining occurrences might not capture all mining activities and the deviation between the threat maps and the spatial mining data used could be highlighting regions where operational mines are not yet mapped but do exist. Overall, these results suggest that a holistic understanding of mining impacts requires us to look far beyond the lease boundaries of mines, congruent with previous studies (Junker et al. 2024;Seki et al. 2022), and shows how valuable a comprehensive baseline on mining activities is for future studies. ...
Natural resource mining is a vital global industry serving sectors such as construction, infrastructure and electronics. The negative impacts of mining, exacerbated by poor governance and lax legislation, have detrimental consequences on the environment, especially in freshwater systems. Mining is shown to disrupt hydrological regimes, sediment dynamics and vegetation structure, which affect water quality, species composition and overall ecosystem health. However, little is known about the global extent of mining impacts on freshwater biodiversity, ultimately hindering mitigation efforts and effective policy implementation. Here, we address this knowledge gap by developing an impact probability model to generate global threat maps based on the impact of mining for freshwater fish, macrophytes and odonatan. We show that the impact of mining differs significantly between taxonomic groups, with hotspots of risk coinciding with high-biodiversity and wilderness areas. Using a random forest machine learning model, we show that the extent of mining impacts is driven primarily by environmental and anthropogenic variables, such as land surface runoff and the Human Development Index. This overview of the global distribution of mining's threat is urgently needed for conservation plans to mitigate the impact of mining on biodiversity.
... The impact that humans have had on the Earth since the rise of industrialization is so vast, that it has been proposed that we are in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). The continued expansion of mining, agriculture, urbanization, logging, and damming threaten remaining biodiversity hotspots, while bushmeat and the pet trade directly deplete non-human primate (primate hereafter) populations (Estrada et al. 2017;Junker et al. 2024). Estimates place the annual loss of animal species at approximately 11-58,000 species per year, and approximately 60% of extant primate species are at risk of extinction due to unsustainable human activity (Dirzo et al. 2014;Estrada et al. 2017). ...
... Estimates place the annual loss of animal species at approximately 11-58,000 species per year, and approximately 60% of extant primate species are at risk of extinction due to unsustainable human activity (Dirzo et al. 2014;Estrada et al. 2017). Threats to primate species vary in severity regionally, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) designates agriculture as being the leading threat to all primate species globally, followed by logging and the livestock industry (Estrada et al. 2017), and mining is emerging as a growing threat to African great apes, amidst a boom in demand for African minerals (Junker et al. 2024). ...
Industrial expansion has brought humans and wildlife into closer contact, and added novel, complex dimensions to human–wildlife relationships. The seven great apes (chimpanzee, Bornean orangutan, Sumatran orangutan, Tapanuli orangutan, Eastern gorilla, Western gorilla, bonobo), the closest extant relatives to humans, have experienced substantial population declines resulting from anthropogenic activities. The effect of human activity on great ape behavioural ecology is therefore an emerging field of inquiry in primatology which has historically been minimally considered. This review explores how wild great apes respond behaviourally to human activities and environmental changes, synthesizing current knowledge and addressing potential outcomes and risks. Using precise search criteria, we found 96 studies documenting changes in great ape behaviour in response to human activity, and despite their broad geographic distribution, we found common patterns and responses across species to increasing human influence. Literature documented shifts in existing behaviour (57), the generation of novel behaviours (53) or reported both (15). Forty-three studies (45%) included direct (23) or indirect (20) assessment of the consequences of these behaviours. Only one study modelled a widespread loss of existing behaviours. The majority of studies included chimpanzees (67), followed by orangutans (19) and gorillas (19), and only 2 included bonobos. We found that the most frequently documented drivers of behavioural responses to anthropogenic activity were wide-scale land-use conversions in ape habitats. In response, apes have adopted crop foraging, and altered nesting behaviour, range use, and social strategies. While these responses appear to allow survival in the immediate sense, they may expose individuals to more risks in the long term. Analysis revealed that under many contexts changing great ape behaviour is putting strain on the human–ape relationship, resulting in injury, harassment, and even the killing of apes. We found examples of tolerant relationships between humans and apes shifting towards conflict, potentially worsening the conservation crisis and inviting inquiry into tolerance thresholds among human communities. We emphasize the importance of community-engaged strategies for reducing competition over resources and conclude that great ape behavioural responses to human activity must be interpreted through a locally specific lens.
... These were identified from Ang et al. (2023), who also provide descriptors. For illustrative purposes, we chose a 10 km buffer zone to represent potential areas directly affected by mining (Junker et al., 2024), noting that a single coordinate itself may not adequately represent impacts to surrounding regions, and that impacts may extend well beyond this buffer. Further descriptions of the spatial analyses are provided in section S2.6 of the ESM. ...
Mostly produced as a by-product of zinc (Zn) mining, cadmium (Cd) is used in solar photovoltaic cells, battery storage, alloys, pigments, plating, and in nuclear reactors. However, it is also a regulated toxic substance with a long history of environmental and health impacts. As the mining of both Zn and Cd will need to increase to support the global energy transition, the status of Cd as either a resource or a pollutant has major implications for global supply chains and environmental management. Here, we present a new global, site-specific database and analysis of Cd resources in Zn-bearing mineral deposits and mines. Our database, which exceeds past Cd studies in scope, transparency and replicability is made available in full to support future assessments of Cd and Zn resources, mine production and associated risks. It includes 927 sites subject to detailed geological data compilation and analysis. Collectively, these sites suggest a new global resource estimate of 3.3 Mt Cd (95% confidence interval: 2.7–6.1 Mt).
A preliminary geospatial analysis of sites in our database and mine toxicity indicators was also conducted. It shows that: -A human population of approximately 3.27 million live within 10 km of sites containing Cd resources,
-∼31% of the world’s Cd resources sit within 20 km of International Union for the Conservation of Nature protected areas, and
-Some 28% of Cd mobilised annually by mining originates from areas hosting seasonal or permanent surface water cover.
As ∼27% of Cd resources are in countries that do not refine it, our study highlights the need for further research exploring global Cd trade flows and associated emissions. Heavy metal pollution in mining and metal production regions is an ongoing challenge, and our global dataset refines our understanding of its magnitude and distribution.
... 16 Multiple studies have indicated spatial congruence between key mineral areas for clean-energy-critical minerals (CECMs) and biodiversity conservation zones. 17 For instance, Junk et al. analyzed the impact of mining activities on African great apes, 18 while Sonter et al. quantified the overlap between minerals associated with renewable energy production and biodiversity hotspots. 12 These studies mainly focus on the effects of mining activities on specific species or minerals related to certain types of clean energy technologies, such as those used in wind and solar power. ...
... Previous studies indicate that mining polygons range from 0.26 to 30.7 km 2 , and mines less than 2 km 2 are called small-scale or artisanal mining. 18,25 In our dataset, small-scale mining areas account for over 70%, significantly higher than regular ones. To capture the impacts of small-scale mining, a 1 km buffer was used to approximate direct impacts. ...
... Indirect impacts of mining are often larger than direct impacts, potentially extending beyond 50-70 km from the mining boundary. 12,18 For example, large-scale industrial mining in the Brazilian Amazon region caused deforestation up to 70 km away, and the Grasberg open-pit mine in West Papua, New Guinea, resulted in forest loss more than 42 times bigger than the mining area itself. 74 Tailings from the Mamut copper mine generated heavy metal pollutants, with ecotoxicological risks detectable up to 36.5 km away. ...
... 8 Mining for critical metals, in particular, will increasingly conflict with biodiversity conservation as demand grows for mineral inputs for renewable energy production, with recent studies mapping overlaps between areas of mining importance and biodiversity importance. [56][57][58] On the 'supply side', however, adverse environmental trends and human pressures threaten to undermine the availability of productive land suitable for cultivation -most notably, the effects of climate change (changing rainfall, temperatures, pests, diseases, wildfires, and water scarcity) and loss of soil fertility and pollinators resulting from unsustainable land management practices. 59,60 In addition, urban expansion -which is projected to increase -tends to displace prime agricultural land, impacting regional agricultural productivity. ...
The Global Biodiversity Framework’s ‘30x30 targets’ aim to restore and conserve 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030, as part of broader efforts to halt and reverse nature loss. The macrofinancial risks of conservation-related land use constraints economies remain underexplored, yet increased competition between land uses calls into question potential trade-offs between economic development and ecosystem protection/restoration. This paper first presents a novel conceptual framework articulating the channels by which a transition to implement the 30x30 targets may affect economic and financial stability. A key finding of this framework is that the importance of productive land to primary commodity production, as well as the specific role land plays within the financial system, means that land-related transition policy shocks impose additional and distinct risk transmission channels compared to climate-related policy shocks. Next, the paper uses a simple cluster analysis approach to explore which countries and regions might be most exposed to increased land competition between conservation and economic activities, indicating where macrofinancial risks might be most likely to emerge. Our results suggests that risks are likely to be disproportionately skewed towards low- and middle-income countries, that generally have a higher proportion of lands of conservation importance, a higher exposure to land competition pressures, and a lower adaptability of the economy to pressures on the food system. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on nature-related transition risks and also provide crucial insights for policymakers advancing green transition strategies.
