Weather & Science
Indonesia Has Lost More Tropical Forest to Mining Than Anywhere
Four countries accounted for 80% of tropical forest loss due to industrial mining, study finds.
Excavators at a nickel mine in Morowali Regency, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, in March.
Photographer: Dimas Ardian/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
More than half the tropical deforestation caused by industrial mining in the last two decades took place in Indonesia, according to a new study.
The researchers, whose paper was published Sept. 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), overlapped the geographic coordinates of industrial mines with forest loss data from 2000 to 2019, focusing on 26 countries.