In this Friday, January 7, 2011 photo, people carry baskets of coal scavenged illegally at an open-cast mine in the village of Bokapahari in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand where a community of coal scavengers live and work. The world's biggest coal users – China, the United States and India – have boosted coal mining in 2017, in an abrupt departure from last year's record global decline for the heavily polluting fuel and a setback to efforts to rein in climate change emissions. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/AP Photo)

Nestled among the cocoa plantations of western Ivory Coast is a gold mine that does not feature on any official maps. It is not run by an industrial mining company, nor does it pay taxes to the central government. The unlicensed mine is a key part of a lucrative business empire headed by the deputy commander of the West African nation's elite Republican Guard, United Nations investigators allege. Here: A gold prospector sits and eats close to a soldier at a gold mine near the village of Gamina, in western Ivory Coast, March 18, 2015. (Photo by Luc Gnago/Reuters)

A rag-and-bone woman stands next to carriages of a coal train outside a coal mine of the state-owned Longmay Group on the outskirts of Jixi, in Heilongjiang province, China, October 22, 2015. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Yogis, Israeli and foreigners, participate in the Arava Yoga Annual festival at the ancient copper mines area of the Timna Valley, in the southern Arava region of Israel, north of Eilat on November 2, 2018. (Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP Photo)

An aerial view of open pits of CODELCO's Andina (L) and Anglo American's Los Bronces copper mines with Olivares glaciers in the background (top L) at Los Andes Mountain range, near Santiago city, November 17, 2014. The rock glaciers of the Chilean central zone, a huge source of water for the basins of the capital, are said to be threatened by the environmental impacts of hydroelectric and mining projects, according to environmental activists Greenpeace. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

Demonstrators clash with riot police during a protest against the contract for the Canadian mining company FQM in Panama City on October 25, 2023. Demonstrators and police clashed Tuesday in Panama as protests over a copper mine spilled into their fifth day, with President Laurentino Cortizo vowing he would prosecute acts of “vandalism”. The protesters are concerned about potential environmental damage from operations at the mine owned by First Quantum, a Canadian firm and one of the biggest copper extractors in the world. After protests erupted on Friday and continued over the weekend, demonstrators had yet to let up by Tuesday in Panama City and in other provinces. (Photo by Roberto Cisneros/AFP Photo)

An aerial view shows a sinkhole 3.5 km (2 miles) to the east of Solikamsk-2 mine in Perm region, November 20, 2014. Shares in Russia's Uralkali, the world's top potash producer, fell sharply for a second day on Wednesday after a mine accident that could reduce global supplies and push up prices of the crop nutrient worldwide. Uralkali shares have fallen 28 percent since Tuesday when it suspended work at its Solikamsk-2 mine, which accounts for a fifth of the company's output and 3.5 percent of global capacity, following an inflow of water. A sinkhole, stretching 30 by 40 metres (yards), found at an abandoned mine 3.5 km (2 miles) to the east, increased concern about the future of the mine because an inflow of water and the resulting sinkhole in 2006 forced another Uralkali operation to shut permanently. (Photo by Reuters/Press service of Uralkali company)

A boy carries a dog as he stands after a Peruvian police operation to destroy illegal gold mining camps in a zone known as Mega 14, in the southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios July 14, 2015. Peruvian police razed dozens of illegal gold mining camps at the edge of an Amazonian nature reserve this week, part of a renewed bid to halt the spread of wildcatting in a remote rainforest region. (Photo by Janine Costa/Reuters)