Overlooked deforestation from global mining activities in the 21st century

Mining is a major driver of deforestation, yet the full scale of its contribution to global natural forest loss and associated carbon emissions remains obscured by the incomplete inventories of mining activities. Here, we present a comprehensive global mining inventory, including 236,028 mining areas with an overall accuracy of 87.37% to quantify direct deforestation and the associated forest carbon emissions from mining activities between 2001 and 2023. Our results reveal that mining-induced deforestation is two to three times higher than previous estimates from existing datasets, accounting for 19,765 km² of deforestation with associated emissions of 0.75 Pg CO₂ over this period. Notably, over half (50.29%) of this deforestation is linked to unrecorded mining activities. These findings highlight the substantially underestimated role of mining, particularly informal and unrecorded activities, in driving global deforestation and climate change, underscoring the urgent need for improved monitoring and regulation of mining impacts on the environment across regions.