Mining and biodiversity: key issues and research needs in conservation science.

ABSTRACT: Mining poses serious and highly specific threats to biodiversity. However, mining can also be a means for financing alternative livelihood paths that, over the long-term, may prevent biodiversity loss. Complex and controversial issues associated with mining and biodiversity conservation are often simplified within a narrow frame oriented towards the negative impacts of mining at the site of extraction, rather than posed as a series of challenges for the conservation science community to embrace. Here, we synthesize core issues that, if better understood, may ensure coexistence between mining and conservation agendas. We illustrate how mining impacts biodiversity through diverse pathways and across spatial scales. We argue that traditional, site-based conservation approaches will have limit

SUBMITTER: Sonter LJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6283941 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature