Mining is the spine of many economies across the globe although it is associated with massive land degradation. Interminable mining-induced land degradation in Southern Africa is as a result of ineffective environmental laws implementation. To achieve sustainability in the mining industry requires gathering adequate information regarding mineral extraction and resultant environmental implications. Owing to this, a systematic literature review focusing on Southern Africa was conducted using the PRISMA methodology guidelines to unearth the governance of land degradation issues in the mining industry utilising peer-reviewed literature from the multidisciplinary online databases namely Scopus, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and authentic grey literature such as annual reports from governments. Major search criteria employed in literature search include Boolean operators and truncation among major key search terms. Continuous mining-induced land degradation is largely attributed to socio-economic and political challenges such as increasing poverty, uncoordinated decision-making, weak law enforcement, land and mineral resources politicisation, miners incompliance to degraded mines rehabilitation and restoration standards which translates to ineffective regulatory frameworks implementation in governance and management of mining and resultant land degradation in Southern Africa. These weaknesses are attributed to mining communities, governments, environmental management authorities and extractive industries incompliance to undertake intended responsibilities. In addition, previous studies related to mining mainly focuses on community development while giving little attention to the need for ecological sustainability by endorsing the improvement on the implementation of the environmental protection legal frameworks governing the mining industry in terms of land degradation management in Southern Africa. Recognising the situation, this study developed a framework with various multifaceted efforts aimed to stimulate full participation and execution of responsibilities by responsible environmental stewards at local, national and regional levels in order to initiate effective implementation of environmental protection laws governing mining and land degradation in line with various recognised sustainable development blueprints at global and regional levels. The developed framework proffers integrated approaches that can be adopted by various environmental protection and management stakeholders such as the miners, governments, environmental management agencies, policy makers, law enforcers, non-governmental organisations and communities to engage into a cooperative engagement to foster effective mining-induced land degradation control.
Gumbo et al. (Sun,) studied this question.