273 / 2023-10-05 19:12:43

The Social and Ecological Sustainability of Mining Disturbed Land: A Global Assessment

Sustainability,Mining,Global Climate Change

In the past 40 years, the global economy has developed rapidly, and mineral resources have been extensively developed. Currently, the global mining damage has exceeded 1% of the Earth's land surface. Mining activities have had significant impacts on local society and ecosystems. At present, there is no research or data to reveal the sustainability of mining damaged land on a global scale. This article uses big Earth data such as nighttime lighting, forest cover, and land cover to assess the social and ecological sustainability of mining damaged land globally for the first time. We used the 11th and 15th goals selected from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as evaluation objects to monitor the nighttime light index per unit area, accessibility of mining cities, building space per unit area, tailings occupation ratio, water quality index, forest coverage rate, land reclamation rate, and net ecosystem productivity of 11000 mines worldwide from 2000 to 2020. The results showed that global mines are getting closer to cities, which means that mining brings environmental risks to more communities; 80% of mining forests have a coverage rate of less than 0.5%, which means that mining leads to large-scale vegetation removal; At the same time, there are less than 100 mines with a land reclamation rate greater than 10%, and most of them are located in developed countries. At the national level, the social and ecological sustainability of mining damaged land in developed countries is slightly higher than that in developing countries. The comprehensive evaluation shows that the social and ecological sustainability of the vast majority of mining damaged land worldwide is poor, and there is a significant gap from the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations. Given the wide distribution and scope of mining damaged land, global sustainable development goals for mining damaged land should be formulated in the future. This research work provides new data for the global sustainability assessment of mining damaged land.