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Impacts for half of the world’s mining areas are undocumented

As the race to extract minerals and metals for clean-energy technologies accelerates, researchers must take more steps to map and study mines globally.
  1. Victor Maus

    1. Victor Maus is a researcher at the Institute for Ecological Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria, and a research scholar at the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Group, Advancing Systems Analysis, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.

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  2. Tim T. Werner

    1. Tim T. Werner is a research fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

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Aerial view of an illegal gold mine in Triangulo de Telembi, Colombia

An illegal gold mine in Triángulo de Telembí, Colombia. Credit: Daniel Munoz/AFP via Getty

Mining is a crucial industry — from iron and copper to gravel and sand, we depend on it for the basic building blocks of the modern world. It is a fast changing sector, as the clean energy transition and digitalization boost demand for materials such as cobalt and lithium and curb the need for others, such as fossil fuels. Yet we know surprisingly little about what’s going on in the sector globally and how mining affects the environment and communities near mines.

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Nature 625, 26-29 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-04090-3

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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