“Mining, a necessary evil, has often been shrouded in mystery, its consequences unrevealed. But how can we address a problem we don’t fully comprehend? This is the lament of researchers, Maus and Werner, who argue that data scarcity conceals approximately half of the world’s mining impacts, leaving the global populace unaware of the full extent of environmental and social risks,” stated Maus in a recent press release.

The lamentable scarcity of data is attributed to a myriad of factors, from inadequate corporate disclosure to abandoned, informal, or illicit mining sites, leaving a significant portion of mining impacts unaccounted for.

Maus and Werner have proposed a four-pronged approach to tackle this challenge. This includes recognizing and addressing the undervaluation of mining impacts and risks globally, ameliorating data collection and sharing practices among the scientific community, augmenting corporate transparency in the mining sector, and harnessing advanced methodologies such as remote sensing and artificial intelligence to bridge the lacunae in data.

“Undoubtedly, this issue demands immediate attention and the exigency is beyond measure. As the world’s hunger for minerals is projected to surge in the forthcoming decades, particularly for clean energy technologies, having comprehensive and transparent data on mining impacts is imperative,” emphasized the authors of the paper. “After all, how can we manage what we are unable to quantify?”