Exploring the interactions between mining and climate change: A bibliometric analysis

The increasing demand for minerals has placed huge pressure on the mining industry to increase production, which consequently affects the environment, and, thus, contributes to climate change. Coal extraction has been reported to be a major contributor to global CO2 emissions, mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels. As a consequence, the frequency and severity of extreme climatic events have also increased throughout the world. Mining is essential for the development of society but contributes to climate change. On the contrary, extreme weather events and rising temperatures associated with climate change affect the overall productivity of mining companies. To develop an understanding of climate change and the mining nexus, the present study aimed to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, focusing on the keywords "Mining Impact" AND "Climate Change". A total of 4814 documents from the SCOPUS database were analyzed using the Bibliometrix library of R software. The results of this analysis are presented considering trending keywords of the selected topic, the pattern of publications, global citations, and countrywide contributions. The findings from these results suggested that adopting scientific mine closure practices and incorporating green engineering or approaches in mining can be helpful in reducing the impact of mining activities on climate change.