Threat of mining to African great apes

• DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl0335
• Publication Date: 2024-04-03T17:58:27Z
• Authors: Jessica Junker; Luise Quoss; Jose Valdez; Mimi Arandjelovic; Abdulai Barrie; Geneviève Campbell; Stefanie Heinicke; Tatyana Humle; Célestin Y. Kouakou; Hjalmar S. Kühl; Isabel Ordaz-Németh; Henrique M. Pereira; Helga Rainer; Johannes Refisch; Laura Sonter; Tenekwetche Sop
• Keywords: Scarcity; Surface mining; Biodiversity hotspot

The rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals. In 2022 at the 15th Conference Parties to Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), seven major economies formed an alliance enhance sustainability mining these essential decarbonization However, there scarcity studies assessing threat global biodiversity. By integrating dataset with great ape density distribution, we estimated number African apes that spatially coincided industrial projects. We show up one-third Africa's population faces mining-related risks. West Africa in particular, numerous areas overlap fragmented habitats, often high-density regions. For 97% areas, no survey data are available, underscoring importance increased accessibility environmental within sector facilitate research into complex interactions between mining, climate, biodiversity, and sustainability.