According to data from the UNEP’s Global Material Flows Database, the world’s biggest mining nations are China, followed by India and the USA.

The UNEP’s Global Material Flows Database states that as of 2023, China was the largest global extractor of domestic materials. 34.2 billion tons of materials, including biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and non-metallic minerals, were extracted throughout the nation. Compared to the next two biggest extractors, India (8.03 billion tonnes) and the United States (7.98 billion tonnes), this is more than four times the amount. In 2023, India surpassed the US to become the second-largest extractor of these resources for the first time.

When examining the domestic extraction of materials per capita, as Statista’s Anna Fleck illustrates in the chart below, a very different picture becomes apparent: in 2023, Australia leads the pack with 102 tonnes of materials extracted per capita, followed by Canada with 67 tonnes and China with 24 tonnes.

China leads the world in the proportion of materials mined per country, with non-metallic resources accounting for 70% of the entire mix. These consist of clay, gravel, and sand for industrial and building uses. In the meantime, metal ores make up around 53% of Australia’s total industry, making it the largest of the four groups. Iron, copper, aluminum, and other non-ferrous metals fall under this category.

In 2023, 104.1 billion tonnes of non-metallic minerals, metal ores, biomass, and fossil fuels were extracted globally. Compare that to 96.5 billion in 2020. With 56.9 billion tonnes of these materials extracted, Asia and the Pacific accounted for the largest share (approximately 55 percent of the global total). This was followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (11.2 billion tonnes), North America (10.6 billion tonnes), Europe (9.2 billion tonnes), Africa (8.2 billion tonnes), West Asia (5.3 billion tonnes), and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (2.9 billion tonnes).

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