Mining for EV Metals Threatens African Gorillas – Nodule Harvesting Can Help

In a study published in Science Advances, Jessica Junker, Laura Sonter, and their team of researchers conclude that substantial increases in mining for minerals used in clean energy technologies poses a serious threat to the great apes of Africa – one of the most endangered groups of species on the planet.  The authors assert that as many as one-third of Africa’s great apes (around 180,000 individuals) are at risk. 

We show that up to one-third of Africa’s great ape population faces mining-related risks. In West Africa in particular, numerous mining areas overlap with fragmented ape habitats, often in high-density ape regions. For 97% of mining areas, no ape survey data are available, underscoring the importance of increased accessibility to environmental data within the mining sector to facilitate research into the complex interactions between mining, climate, biodiversity, and sustainability.

Junker Et al.

The study goes on to note that past work has often underestimated the risks to primates from mining in Africa.  They attribute that underestimation to lack of good data.  The authors also go to great lengths to explain that the terrestrial mine site itself is only the beginning of the story when it comes to understanding threats and risks to the environment and to the great apes.  We have previously noted that work published by Dr. Laura Sonter has shown deforestation associated indirectly from terrestrial mines is 12x greater than the mine site alone. These deforestation impacts are felt up to 70km from mine sites according to the recent paper.    

Indirect threats to great apes cited in the work include high noise production from drilling and blasting which have been traced to reduced survival probability.  Mine and road encroachment lead to habitat destruction, fragmentation, and degradation.  Also, the introduction of new settlements encroaches upon natural habitat.  The release of pollutants through the air and in waterways carries negative health consequences on primates and their food sources.  In addition, disease, light pollution, and road collisions are also cited.  The authors note that risks rise during exploratory work and persist while the mine operates. 

Mining is one of the top drivers of deforestation globally with tropical rainforests standing out as mining-induced deforestation hotspots (24). Moreover, deforestation within current mining leases suggests that the rate of mining-related forest loss has increased significantly over the past 10 years (24). These patterns, which are driven by a rapidly growing global demand for critical metals vital to energy transitions, are expected to exacerbate deforestation over the coming years if companies continue business as usual.

The large overlap between mining areas and areas important to apes is partly because many of the minerals needed for the energy transition are in places that have not yet been industrialized, which typically include rural or remote parts of the world. This means that current climate solutions could lead to more industrialization in these places, which could worsen the climate crisis.

Junker, Et. al.

There is no getting around the fact that if we are going to decarbonize we will need to accelerate mine production. That circumstance will impose some steep costs on our environment if we continue to extract minerals exclusively from some of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world, in a manner that is highly invasive and that brings with it indirect impacts that are almost as profound as the direct impacts. Environmental groups cannot wish this circumstance away.

In addition, the injustices inflicted by the expansion of industrial development are already immense and may worsen with an increase in unsustainable economic development in previously undeveloped areas. To illustrate this, 69% of energy transition minerals and metals projects worldwide are on or near land that belongs to Indigenous people or small holder farmers and pastoralists, with an even higher proportion (77%) of overlap in Africa.

Junker Et al.

People suffer when we build and expand terrestrial mines for energy minerals.  Thousands of people die each year from mining and mining-related contamination.  23 million people are exposed to toxins from contaminated flood plains from mining according to researchers.  

We can spare the great apes (to include humans) from death and destruction while protecting the world’s most biodiverse and threatened ecosystem if we supplant terrestrial mine production for nodule harvesting (which has no pathway by which to impose negative health impacts on great apes (to include humans).  Nodule harvesting is non-invasive, and will occur on the abyssal plains, a remote area which scientific study has shown to be sparsely inhabited and lightly biodiverse. The direct impacts from nodule harvesting (a 20% decrease in biodiversity in a recent study) are far more manageable than those associated with strip mining (a 100% reduction in biodiversity). The indirect impacts from nodule harvesting are minor in comparison with those associated with terrestrial mining. 

Ironically groups such as Greenpeace, WWF, the Environmental Justice Foundation, and others campaign for a moratorium or a ban on nodule harvesting.  If these groups are successful, their efforts will necessarily result in increased threats to the great apes, to vulnerable human populations, and to the most sensitive, endangered, and biodiverse ecosystem on the planet.  It is an awkward situation for these groups to reconcile.