It's Not Just The Amazon Being Torn Apart. These Are The Forests The World Is Losing

The devastating destruction that's happening across the Amazon might be the first thing that comes to your mind, but it's not the only place where dwindling forests are a concern.

The amount of forest lost to intensive industrial mining activities in the tropics is not pretty. More than one thousand square kilometers of tropical forest was lost due to mining in the last fifteen years.

In just four countries, satellite data shows four-fifths of the destruction occurred. The top of the table was occupied by Indonesia, which was responsible for over half of the recorded tropical rainforest destruction.

A professor at the Institute for Ecological Economics at the Vienna University says there is a wide range of environmental damage caused by mining operations.

An industrial mine can easily disrupt both the landscape and the environment. Industrial mining is still a weakness in their strategies.

A total of 26 different countries were covered by the study data, accounting for over 70% of the total mining-related tropical deforestation that occurred between 2000 and 2019. The activities that were covered were coal, gold, iron Ore and Bauxite.

The consequences of mining went well beyond the resources. Transport infrastructure, storage facilities, and the growth of townships are some of the factors that lead to the destruction of forests in two-thirds of tropical countries.

The level of destruction due to mining is now falling. Coal mining continues to grow in Indonesia despite the fact that the country saw forest loss due to industrial mining peaks.

According to Hariadi Kartodihardjo, a professor of Forest Policy at Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia, there is still need for strong land use planning to ensure that mining does not destroy forests or violate community rights.

The current political situations in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia mean that a major reduction in mining and depredation is unlikely in the near future, according to the researchers.

In some tropical countries, other land intensive activities such as cattle farming or palm oil production cause more destruction than mining does.

The property rights of local communities and indigenous peoples who have been living in the forests long before the mining companies arrived is one of the best ways to prevent depredation.

When it comes to an environmental analysis like this, the researchers want to look at smaller scale mining operations that don't get a lot of attention. The goal is to get a better idea of what's happening and then take action.

Anthony Bebbington is a geography professor at Clark University in Massachusetts.

It is important to address these impacts in order to conserve tropical forests and protect the livelihoods of people who live in them.

The research was published in a journal.