Biodiversity Loss Due to Mining Activities

Abstract

The mining sector, despite its significant role in the climate and biodiversity crises, has not garnered substantial attention in global discussions on these matters. COP15 presents an additional chance to integrate biodiversity and forests into standard practices within the mining sector. In 2019, a UN report highlighted a global biodiversity crisis characterized by an alarming pace of animal and plant extinctions, putting one million species at risk of vanishing. Surprisingly, the biodiversity crisis doesn't garner the same level of media and political focus as the climate crisis, despite the imperative to address both simultaneously. Preserving habitats such as forests serves a dual purpose: safeguarding species diversity while also serving as a solution to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Forests act as vital carbon sinks, absorbing and storing atmospheric carbon as biomass. Mining activities, essential for meeting global resource demands, have become a pervasive threat to biodiversity, leading to widespread ecological disruption and biodiversity loss.