Deforestation triggered by artisanal mining in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

The discovery of valuable minerals in the mineral-abundant eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo can stimulate extensive migration into remote areas of the Congo Basin rainforest. Despite the widespread practice of artisanal mining, its role in the ongoing deforestation has not received adequate attention. Using difference-in-differences estimation, we show that artisanal mining triggers deforestation at least 5 km from mining sites. Within this distance, the onset of mining causes an additional 4 percentage points of forest loss after 10 years. In total, the indirect deforestation caused by mining through the expansion of other land uses is 28 times larger than the forest area directly cleared for mining. Most of this loss is caused by increased farming around mines, followed by forest cleared for settlements. These indirect effects reveal a much larger role played by artisanal mining in deforestation dynamics than previously assumed and explain at least 6.6% of the total deforestation in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. A wealth of critical minerals has driven widespread artisanal mining in the Congo Basin, bringing with it the risk of deforestation. Statistical analysis of remote-sensing data reveals that mining-associated deforestation is dominated by indirect factors, land-use change to support mining communities, rather than the direct impacts of the onset of mining.