Under the 2030 Global Forest Vision, the Forest Declaration Assessment Partners are launching a new set of Priority Actions for Mining & Mineral Supply Chains. We call on companies to adopt and drive forward these high-impact actions in the near term to address the mining sector’s forest impacts, while continuing to supply the minerals essential to the renewable energy transition.

The challenge: Mining drives deforestation

To say that critical minerals are in high demand is an understatement. Demand is at unprecedented levels due to the energy transition, the artificial intelligence boom, and an increase in defense and national security spending. The drive to meet this demand is spurring an expansion and intensification of mining – including in high biodiversity, high integrity forest landscapes.

Mining, however, drives significant deforestation and forest degradation. Direct impacts arise when forests are cleared for mining pits or shafts, spoil heaps, or on-site processing or tailing storage facilities. Between  2001 and 2023, mining sites caused almost 2 million hectares of forest loss, an area as large as Slovenia.

However, the most substantial impacts of mining are indirect. The opening of a mine triggers broader landscape change: roads are constructed, settlements expand, and surrounding areas are opened to additional economic activity such as agriculture and logging. All these activities drive further deforestation and biodiversity loss. A recent study of the deforestation footprint of mining in sub-Saharan Africa found that for every hectare of forest that is lost directly at the mine site, mining triggers, on average, 34 hectares of additional off-site forest loss within five years. Losing even more of these essential ecosystems could trigger devastating consequences. Global GDP could decline by at least USD 2 trillion annually by 2030 if ecosystem services such as pollination or timber supply could collapse due to deforestation and associated biodiversity loss. It cannot be overstated how important it is to understand and address the mining sector’s broader impact as a driver of deforestation and forest degradation.

The imperative: Enabling the green energy transition

Global warming and its adverse impacts are accelerating; we need renewable energy technologies to reduce the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions we pump into the atmosphere. But these technologies are often mineral-intensive; for example, an electric vehicle requires on average six times more mineral inputs than a conventional car. Yet, this does not negate their climate benefits. For EVs, lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are around half those of internal combustion engine cars on average, with the potential for a further 25% reduction with low-carbon electricity. Production of critical transition minerals will have to increase to speed up the energy transition – and expanded mining is one part of that solution. On the current trajectory, demand for minerals used in clean energy technologies is projected to double by 2040; and it may need to quadruple in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Yet the energy transition is not the only development driving increased demand. Data centers for training and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) require a growing amount of critical minerals for infrastructure and electricity; military usage also accounts for a significant share of total critical minerals demand (e.g., 10.5% of global refined copper production in 2021). Amidst a challenging geopolitical context, the world must find a way to effectively prioritize and channel critical raw materials toward the uses that bring the most benefit to society.

These competing factors create a fundamental tension: expanding mineral supply is necessary to achieve climate objectives, yet we cannot afford to continue mining practices that undermine other environmental and social goals. The imperative, then, is to transform how mining and mineral supply chains are undertaken and governed – to determine how mineral supply chains can operate in ways that are consistent with climate, biodiversity, and human rights objectives.

The solutions: Mining as stewardship

Luckily, mining’s deforestation footprint today is less of a blind spot than it used to be. Thanks to advances in remote sensing and datasets and a growing body of scientific literature, we can now quantify the issue with increasing accuracy.

However, improvement in understanding the issue is so far outpacing improvement in solving it; the forest impacts of mining – especially indirect or cumulative – remain a relatively blind spot in global forest commitments, forest governance, and forest finance. For example, many sectoral voluntary sustainability initiatives lack specific, biome-relevant guidance for addressing forest-related risks and impacts throughout the full lifecycle of mining activities.

To develop and implement effective solutions, companies in mining and mineral supply chains are crucial partners. They are uniquely positioned to drive progress at scale even beyond the sector due to their impact and influence in many national economies.

Pathways for leadership are clear: Companies can help steward the transition through solutions like applying the mitigation hierarchy; strengthening traceability and supply chain transparency; embedding forest and rights considerations into procurement and investment decisions; and participating in collaborative approaches beyond operational boundaries. And companies at every stage of mineral value chains can reduce critical mineral demand by designing for dematerialization and circularity – transition minerals demand can be reduced by an estimated 58% by 2050 through increased recycling and recovery of minerals and improved technological efficiency.

The newly launched Priority Actions for Mining and Mineral Supply Chains  consolidate these approaches into a structured agenda for near-term implementation.

The gaps that remain: Mining needs a progress assessment

Mining clearly poses a significant threat to forests, particularly through indirect and cumulative impacts that remain poorly measured, insufficiently governed, and only partially integrated into policy and market frameworks. While recent work has improved our understanding of direct impacts, we still lack a comprehensive view of how mining affects forests across regions, supply chains, and over time. Closing this gap requires more systematic assessment of the sector’s forest impacts and of the effectiveness of existing responses. A stronger evidence base can help identify priority interventions, highlight emerging risks, and inform more targeted action by governments, companies, investors, and standard-setting initiatives.

At the same time, these challenges cannot be effectively addressed in isolation. Mining-related deforestation reflects broader structural dynamics, including governance gaps, misaligned incentives, and economic models that continue to rely heavily on extraction. Progress will therefore depend not only on improving sectoral practices, but also on advancing forest-positive governance, finance, and development pathways more broadly.

The role of the Forest Declaration Assessment will remain to rally civil society as well as businesses, financial institutions, and governments around impactful actions to achieve global forest goals and to continue the conversation about mining and forests.