The social impacts of resource extraction for the clean energy transition: A qualitative news media analysis

Resource extraction is fundamental to our society and our reliance on resource use is increasing with the clean energy transition. While global sustainability assessments on resource extraction gain relevance, the social dimension is often understudied. A qualitative news media analysis was conducted on 15 resources that are critical to the clean energy transition to assess and categorize the social impacts globally. The framework pro vided by the UNEP Methodological Sheets for Sub-Categories in the Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) 2021 was used to create pre-coded categories to document the type of social impact described. The analysis found 963 news articles across 68 countries. The local community stakeholder group faced the most social impacts por-trayed in the news reports, followed by the worker and society stakeholder groups. Two additional subcategories, eco-tourism and health impacts on children, were coded to capture the full range of social impacts. This research provides a basis to create a more comprehensive assessment of the social dimension in the resource extraction sector. It can be used to expand upon existing social sustainability frameworks or to prioritize data collection when conducting an S-LCA. The results contribute to a better understanding of the social impacts from the clean energy transition.