Delivering on climate goals will require a rapid halt to deforestation, and reforestation and afforestation at scale. But it will also require a secure and sustainable supply of minerals and materials for green technologies and sustainable infrastructure. Many of these commodities are found in critical forest landscapes, placing forests at increased risk as demand for minerals increases. This paper explores the mining sector’s impacts on forests, and the potential for ‘forest-smart’ mining policies and practices to support deforestation-free mineral supply chains.
2. Mining’s impacts on forests
Better understanding of the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation is crucial to safeguarding forests. It is thought that around 73 per cent of deforestation is driven by commercial agriculture and subsistence agriculture, 10 per cent by urban expansion and infrastructure respectively, and 7 per cent by mining.2 Research has tended to focus on the major drivers of deforestation, notably the production of agricultural commodities, while the development of data on other drivers of deforestation such as mining and infrastructure has lagged.3 A Chatham House workshop in 2015 explored the available information on mining’s impacts on forests. It found that while the sector’s direct impacts were relatively well detailed by case studies, there was far less understanding of its indirect and cumulative impacts, and no comprehensive review of its aggregate impacts.4 Since then, a body of research exploring mining’s wider impacts on forests at regional and global level has emerged.5 This includes a series of three World Bank reports which explore the impacts of large-scale, artisanal and small-scale mining and the sector’s engagement with carbon and biodiversity offsets.6 This paper builds upon these reports, the aforementioned workshop and stakeholder engagement in the UK and China through 2019 and early 2020.7
While mining’s direct impact on forests is often limited, its indirect and cumulative impacts can be significant. Mining’s direct impacts on forests include land-use change at mine sites, and downstream pollution and environmental damage. The sector’s indirect and cumulative impacts can be much more significant. They include those associated with the development of road, rail and port infrastructure for the transport and export of minerals, and the impacts associated with inflows of workers and other economic activities such as logging as infrastructure opens forests up. The above-mentioned World Bank studies identified 3,300 large-scale mines in forests, including 1,500 active mines and a further 1,800 lying idle or under development. They found evidence of forest loss and degradation within a radius of 50 km of most of the mines, and in some cases of up to 100 km. The findings suggest that at least 10 per cent and up to one-third of the world’s forests may already be affected by mining. Similarly, research on deforestation in the Amazon has detected evidence of forest impacts within a radius of up to 70 km of mine sites, and suggests that mining accounted for almost 10 per cent of all Amazon forest loss between 2005 and 2015.8
The forest impacts of mining tend to be concentrated in certain countries, and associated with particular commodity supply chains. Figure 1 shows large-scale operational mines in forest areas, with each mine labelled according to the primary commodity it produces. Almost three-quarters of these mines are in low- and middle-income countries, including Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Liberia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Suriname, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The inset figure shows that the top three minerals (by volume) mined in forests are gold (often mined in valuable biome forests), iron ore and copper. The mineral supply chains most reliant on forest mines are those for bauxite, titanium and nickel, with more than 60 per cent of the mines for each of these commodities located in forest landscapes.9 The type of mining, its infrastructure requirements and its effective ‘footprint’ will vary between commodities. Low-value, high-volume commodities such as iron ore and bauxite require far more extensive infrastructure than do high-value, low-volume commodities such as gold and cobalt. The companies whose portfolios have the highest proportion of mines in forest areas include Alcoa, ArcelorMittal, RUSAL, Vale, and several Chinese and Russian state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
Figure 1: Large-scale mines in forest areas (MFAs), by primary commodity
— Source: Image reproduced and adapted from World Bank (2019), Making Mining Forest-Smart, Executive Summary Report, p. 33, https://www.profor.info/sites/profor.info/files/Forest%20Smart%20Mining%20Executive%20Summary-fv_0.pdf (accessed 13 Oct. 2020); mine, commodity and forest cover data drawn from World Bank (2019), Forest-Smart Mining: Identifying Factors Associated with the Impacts of Large-Scale Mining on Forests, Washington, DC: World Bank, https://www.profor.info/sites/profor.info/files/Forest%20Smart%20Mining_LSM%20REPORT_0.pdf (accessed 13 Oct. 2020).
Figure 1: Large-scale mines in forest areas (MFAs), by primary commodity
The potential for ‘forest-smart’ mining
As a concept, forest-smart mining can be understood as mining that acknowledges the interlinkages between forests and other land uses – including socio-economic and cultural uses, and ecosystem services – and that actively seeks to avoid or reduce any loss or damage to those uses. In some cases, it may even promote a net gain for them. The World Bank identifies forest-smart mining as one of the building blocks of climate-smart mining more broadly: its Climate Smart Mining Initiative aims to help developing countries benefit from the growing demand for minerals that will be crucial to the transition to a decarbonized economy, while minimizing the climate and environmental impacts of their extraction.10 At its most basic, forest-smart mining means following the mitigation hierarchy when planning and developing mining projects, namely:
- First, avoiding any negative climate impacts and biodiversity loss;
- Second, minimizing any impacts and losses that still occur;
- Third, rehabilitating and restoring forest cover and biodiversity where there are unavoidable negative impacts and losses; and
- Fourth, as a last resort, offsetting any remaining negative impacts or losses through substitution or compensation.11
As a practice, forest-smart mining entails the implementation of a range of approaches and tools that span the mitigation hierarchy. It is typically guided by an overarching policy commitment to no net loss of forest cover, or even by a commitment to net gain where there is potential for reforestation or afforestation. As Figure 2 shows, the forest-smart mining ‘toolkit’ is broad, and the exact tools available will vary according to the context of the mine and the stage of mining activity. Forest-smart approaches at the higher end of the mitigation hierarchy include undertaking strategic and cumulative impact assessments, identifying ‘no go’ areas for mining, minimizing polluting waste and avoiding accidents. Options at the lower end of the mitigation hierarchy include land restoration and the development of carbon and biodiversity offsets.
While there is a growing body of best practice, no country, company or mine is 100 per cent forest-smart at present. The World Bank study on the forest impacts of large-scale mining, mentioned above, assessed 21 case studies across 14 countries and found that direct forest impacts are most often and most effectively addressed. By contrast, efforts to address indirect and cumulative impacts through integrated, landscape-level approaches tend to be hampered by a lack of clarity between governments and companies over who is responsible for forest impacts, and for financing and implementing mitigating measures.
Timing also matters, as forest impacts tend to peak around the construction phase. While forest-smart approaches can be deployed at all stages of the project cycle, they are most effective when integrated into the decision on whether to proceed with mining, and into project planning and mine development from the outset. Opportunities to mitigate forest impacts become more limited once mines are in operation (as well as more technically difficult and expensive to introduce retrospectively). There may still, however, be significant opportunities for progressive rehabilitation and for reforestation and afforestation at the mine closure stage.
While forest-smart approaches can be deployed at all stages of the project cycle, they are most effective when integrated into the decision on whether to proceed with mining, and into project planning and mine development from the outset.
There is a strong correlation between best practice and good governance. While large-scale mining is generally guided by well-developed legal, regulatory and policy frameworks, levels of implementation and enforcement will vary by jurisdiction. As Figure 1 shows, over half of all operational mines in forests are in low- or lower-middle-income countries, where institutional, technical and financial capacity is often weaker. With effective stakeholder engagement, integrated landscape-level approaches may help to ensure that interventions are locally appropriate and take into account the socio-economic and environmental needs of local stakeholders, particularly communities and workers. However, such approaches require considerable institutional, technical and financial capacity, and have proven challenging to implement in countries such as Indonesia.12
There also appears to be heavy reliance on tools at the lower end of the mitigation hierarchy. Offsets should be a last resort, yet in practice they account for many of the forest-smart approaches cited. To be effective, offsets must demonstrate equivalency, yet this is difficult given the timeframe between the loss of forest carbon and/or biodiversity and the reversal of this loss (or even net gain) as a result of offsetting, and given methodological challenges in quantifying the amount of carbon held by forests now and in the future.13 Reforestation does not guarantee functional ecosystems or biodiversity; indeed, many ecosystem services cannot be offset, and mature (or ‘old’) forests – which play a specific role in carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services – cannot simply be replaced. Offsets must also demonstrate permanence to ensure the long-term protection of forests. This is already a challenge in weak regulatory environments, and will become more so as climate change increases pressure and impacts on land.14 Offsets also require long-term finance, yet there remain serious questions around how finance can be guaranteed when mining projects change ownership or when companies are dissolved. Given the wider socio-economic and cultural role of forests, and the potential for offsets to have negative socio-economic impacts and exacerbate inequalities within and between countries, offsets also raise serious equity questions.15
Figure 2: Forest-smart mining tools and approaches
— Source: Indicative tools and approaches, drawing upon examples cited in the World Bank’s large-scale mining case studies.
Figure 2: Forest-smart mining tools and approaches
Hosunuma, N., Herold, M., De Sy, V., De Fries, R. S., Brockhaus, M., Verchot, L., Angelsen, A. and Romijn, E. (2012), ‘An assessment of deforestation and forest degradation drivers in developing countries’, Environmental Research Letters, 7(2012) 044009, https://www.cifor.org/publications/pdf_files/articles/ABrockhaus1201.pdf (accessed 12 May 2020).
Pendrill, F., Persson, U. M., Godar, J., Kastner, T., Moran, D., Schmidt, S. and Wood, R. (2019), ‘Agricultural and forestry trade drives large share of tropical deforestation emissions’, Global Environmental Change, 56: pp. 1–10, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378018314365 (accessed 12 May 2020).
Royal Institute of International Affairs (2015), ‘The Impact of Mining on Forests: Information Needs for Effective Policy Responses’, Meeting Summary, 3 June 2015, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/events/special/Mining_workshop_summary_final.pdf (accessed 12 May 2020).
See, for example, Bebbington, A. J., Humphreys Bebbington, D. and Sauls, L. A. (2018), Assessment and Scoping of Extractive Industry and Infrastructure in Relation to Deforestation: Global and Synthesis Report, Climate and Land Use Alliance, http://www.climateandlandusealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Executive-Summary-Global-Synthesis-Impacts-of-EII-on-Forests-1.pdf (accessed 23 Mar. 2020); and WWF (2018), Assessing the potential threat of extractive industries to tropical intact forest landscapes, https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/?331793/Report-Assessing-the-potential-threat-of-extractive-industries-to-tropical-intact-forest-landscapes (accessed 12 May 2020).
These reports were commissioned by the World Bank and the Program on Forests (PROFOR) and delivered by a consortium including Fauna and Flora International, Levin Sources, Fairfields Consulting and Swedish Geological AB. All three are available at https://www.profor.info/knowledge/extractive-industries-forest-landscapes-balancing-trade-offs-and-maximizing-benefits (accessed 12 May 2020).
The Chatham House research workshop ‘The Role of Innovative Technologies and Finance in Advancing Forest-Smart Mining’ was held on 10 May 2019. See https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/role-innovative-technologies-and-finance-advancing-forest-smart-mining (accessed 10 May 2020). See acknowledgments section for further details.
Sonter, L. J., Herrera, D., Barrett, D. J., Galford, G. L., Moran, C. J. and Soares-Filho, B. S. (2018), ‘Mining drives extensive deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon’, Nature Communications, 8: 1013, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00557-w.epdf?author_access_token=0zkGGfo8nzkVzWR59YoKx9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PxaSsLyPxdt4mBwruCIzKNSYm-akEL7-BlIhZoszC4NGVL1IpcmV2RkLUYJgNP4lRqWM00zXzXWl-y1dN5khtJb0ABGc8EEUkJENz9j4ETwA%3D%3D (accessed 12 May 2020).
For further details, see World Bank (2019), Forest-Smart Mining: Identifying Factors Associated with the Impacts of Large-Scale Mining on Forests, Washington, DC: World Bank, https://www.profor.info/sites/profor.info/files/Forest%20Smart%20Mining_LSM%20REPORT_0.pdf (accessed 12 May 2020).
World Bank (2019), ‘Climate-Smart Mining: Minerals for Climate Action’, video, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/extractiveindustries/brief/climate-smart-mining-minerals-for-climate-action (accessed 12 May 2020).
The Cross-Sector Biodiversity Initiative (CSBI) defines the mitigation hierarchy as ‘the sequence of actions to anticipate and avoid impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services; and where avoidance is not possible, minimize; and, when impacts occur, rehabilitate or restore; and where significant residual impacts remain, offset’. It should be noted that 1) ‘minimize’ typically means to reduce to the extent possible rather than to zero; 2) land rehabilitation, reclamation and remediation only amount to ‘restoration’ where they ensure gains for specific biodiversity and ecosystem services that are targets for mitigation; and 3) ‘offsetting’ can include substitution or compensation as a last resort, although compensation is not possible for many ecosystem services. See Ekstrom, J., Bennun, L. and Mitchell, R. (2015), A cross-sector guide for implementing the Mitigation Hierarchy, Cross-Sector Biodiversity Initiative (CSBI), http://www.csbi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CSBI-Mitigation-Hierarchy-Guide.pdf (accessed 10 May 2020).
Indonesia’s OneMap Initiative was designed to address overlapping land claims but has proved challenging to implement. See World Resources Institute (2019), ‘Understanding Indonesia’s OneMap Initiative’, https://www.wri.org/tags/understanding-indonesias-onemap-initiative (accessed 12 May 2020).
Baccini, A., Walker, W., Carvalho, L., Farina, M., Sulla-Menashe, D. and Houghton, R. A. (2017), ‘Tropical forests are a net carbon source based on aboveground measurements of gain and loss’, Science, 13 Oct 2017: Vol. 358, Issue 6360, pp. 230–34, DOI: 10.1126/science.aam5962.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2019), Climate Change and Land: An IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/ (accessed 12 May 2020).
Although the issue is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to acknowledge ongoing debate around the equity implications of carbon offsets and trading mechanisms (including REDD+), and the extent to which these support or undermine climate justice. The debate concerns both the global implications (i.e. historical responsibility for emissions and, in turn, the responsibility of rich countries to reduce emissions at source rather than offset them in developing countries) and the local impacts of offsets (where the varied socio-economic roles of land and forests may be affected by the development of offsets, and where land rights are contested/unclear).