Researchers from the Institute for Ecological Economics, together with other universities, have presented the first comprehensive study on the spread of forest loss due to intensified mining.

The growing demand for minerals and the resulting mining activities continue to drive deforestation worldwide. Today, mines worldwide extract more than twice the amount of raw materials mined in 2000. Tropical forests are particularly vulnerable. Until now, the full extent of the impact on tropical ecosystems has been unknown. Stefan Giljum, Victor Maus, Nikolas Kuschnig, and Sebastian Luckeneder from the WU Institute for Ecological Economics, together with their colleagues, show where industrial mining caused the greatest deforestation between 2000 and 2019.

The paper has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118273119