2011), and then invested US$9 billion in roads, railways, and other infrastructure with Chinese financial backing. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, Sicomines, a Sino-Congolese joint venture, obtained a world-class copper reserve, the Dikulwe-Mashamba concession (Putzel et al. The upsurge in mineral exploration and exploitation is often linked to major infrastructural projects, including roads and railways to move commodities from mine to smelters, as well as shipping ports for export, and hydroelectric dams. Such investment is historically unprecedented in African natural resource development (Broadman 2007 Janneh & Ping 2011). For instance, more than 230 Australian mining companies are involved in over 600 projects in mining exploration, extraction, and processing across more than 42 African countries, with a total current and projected investment of more than US$45 billion (USGS 2011). While Chinese investment is skyrocketing, so too is investment from the other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, and India) and western countries (especially Canada and Australia), with investment growing equally fast in relative terms (Janneh & Ping 2011). Chinese investment in African mining quadrupled from 2000 to 2009, from US$25.7 billion to US$103.4 billion per year (Zhang 2011). 2009).Īfrica's mineral wealth is now attracting a stampede of foreign investment.
Yet with less than 5% of global mineral exploitation having occurred in Africa, and large parts of the continent being geologically unexplored, the potential for growth is enormous (Taylor et al.
Here we highlight potential environmental threats posed by the rapid escalation of large- and small-scale mining.Īfrica contains around 30% of the world's mineral resources-including the largest known reserves of a wide range of strategically important minerals, including phosphate, platinum-group metals, gold, diamonds, chromite, cobalt, manganese, and vanadium, and huge deposits of aluminum, uranium, iron ore, and coal (Taylor et al. This boom is attracting tens of billions of dollars in foreign investment (Janneh & Ping 2011 Zhang 2011) and will result in substantial economic growth and development, but it also carries big risks for African societies and the environment. Without careful management, rapid mining expansion and its associated secondary effects will have severe impacts on African environments and biodiversity.Īfrica is on the verge of an unprecedented mining boom. Research and policy measures are needed to (1) understand the synergies between mining and other development activities, (2) improve environmental impact assessments, (3) devise mitigation and offsetting mechanisms, and (4) identify market choke points where lobbying can improve environmental practice. Some of the environmental impacts of African mining development could potentially be offset: mining set-asides could protect some wildlife habitats, whereas improving transportation networks could increase crop yields and spare land for conservation. Threats are not uniform spatially, and much of the Congo Basin is devoid of mineral occurrences and may be spared from direct mining impacts. We illustrate these threats in Central Africa, which contains the vast Congo rainforest, and show that more than a quarter of 4,151 recorded mineral occurrences are concentrated in three regions of biological endemism-the Cameroon-Gabon Lowlands, Eastern DRC Lowlands, and Albertine Rift Mountains-and that most of these sites are currently unprotected. We review the environmental threats from African mining development, including habitat alteration, infrastructure expansion, human migration, bushmeat hunting, corruption, and weak governance.
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