Environmental NGO Advocacy and Governance Transformation in Mining Regions: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT The global extractive mining industry has undergone significant expansion over recent decades, triggering severe ecological and social impacts that threaten vulnerable communities. Amid these challenges, environmental non‐governmental organizations (ENGOs) play an increasingly vital role in advocating for equitable and sustainable mining governance. However, existing research on ENGO advocacy remains fragmented across disciplines, necessitating a systematic review to identify patterns of strategies, constraints, and outcomes of NGO activism in diverse mining regions globally. This study employs a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, with searches in Scopus and Web of Science yielding 143 articles, screened and resulting in 39 publications meeting the inclusion criteria (published ≥2015, English language, focused on environmental NGOs in mining). The reviewed articles were predominantly qualitative (30; 77%), with quantitative (4; 10%) and mixed methods (5; 13%) approaches comprising the remainder. Articles were assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) and analyzed thematically using NVivo 14. The findings identify six key advocacy strategies emphasizing digital campaigns and community collaboration, reflecting a transformation toward hybrid environmental activism. Simultaneously, NGOs confront persistent structural barriers operating across macro, meso, and micro levels, including state repression, corporate dominance, and community co‐optation. Nevertheless, advocacy efforts have produced five significant achievements: governance reform, community empowerment, regulatory change, socio‐ecological impacts, and enhanced public accountability. Community empowerment emerges as the most prominent impact, underscoring that affected communities exercise autonomous collective agency amplified—rather than created—by NGO intervention. This study proposes a hybrid environmental activism framework grounded in environmental justice principles that integrates social movement theory with environmental governance perspectives, and recommends further research on gender dimensions, intergenerational justice, and socio‐ecological resilience in mining contexts. This systematic review synthesizes global evidence on environmental NGO advocacy in mining regions, revealing hybrid activism that merges digital campaigns, legal strategies, and community collaboration. Despite multilayered structural barriers, such advocacy advances governance reform, community empowerment, and transparency through a hybrid framework.