coal mining Archives

A pastoralist looks at Hasdeo’s Parsa East and Kete Basan (PEKB) mine that has lead to severe environmental and social issues. Residents of Hasdeo region fear their land meeting the same fate as its adjacent Korba, a critically polluted area.

Photo by Vaishnavi Suresh/PEP Collective

CLIMATE CRISIS

On International Forests Day: Reality of Forests in India

24th March 2023

21st March is marked as International Forests Day: A brief look at the state of Forests and Forest Rights in India today.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Adani@Carmichael: The world’s most insane energy project moves ahead

22nd June 2019

Once fully operationalised, Adani’s Carmichael would be bigger than almost any mine in the world. Collectively, the Galilee Basin mines would produce up to 330 million tonnes of coal annually, which, when burned, would release more than 700 million tonnes of CO2, ranking as the world’s seventh-largest emitter, were the Galilee projects considered a country….

Development/Growth

Digging Into Adani: The dubious dealings of India’s corporate colossus

8th October 2017

From ABC News: This eagerly awaited TV-documentary is the result of a months-long investigation into the Adani Group, made in the context of a bitter clash between citizen-groups and the Australian government over the company’s giant coal mine in Queensland. It offers a revealing look into the company’s controversial business practices and their global consequences….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why Adani’s planned Carmichael coalmine matters to Australia – and the world

10th September 2017

From Guardian/Al Jazeera: Proposals for one of the world’s largest mines in Queensland threaten not only the Great Barrier Reef, but also global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Australia’s government is changing legislation protecting land rights for Aboriginal people in order to get Adani’s Carmichael mine, one of the world’s largest, project over the line….

Representative pic

ENERGY

A window into coal workers in India: The history of Raniganj Coalfield

18th August 2017

From Sanhati: A history of the 240 year-old Raniganj Coalfield– the story of its workers –the many lives that have been spent in its shadows, displaced by coal and depending on it for survival –would be a tale every bit as expansive as the Mahabharata. This two-part article gives a short glimpse of this history….

Development/Growth

India’s massive corporate bad debts and natural resource auctions

4th August 2017

India’s former energy secretary E.A.S. Sharma writes in The Wire: Everyone knows that the NPA problem is due to the lack of due diligence on the part of banks. If banks were to refuse new loans to some of these indebted companies, nearly 40% of the coal blocks assigned to them would not get developed….

Conflict/Dispossession

Watch: Will Bhangar be Mamata Banerjee’s Nandigram?

26th June 2017

From People’s Media: In January 2017, two people were killed when the police fired on villagers in Bhangar, in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district. They were protesting the forcible acquisition of their fertile agricultural land for a proposed powerg-rid substation. Read reports and watch a short film made on location, as the events unfolded….

Larry C Price/The Guardian

Conflict/Dispossession

The world’s most toxic town: the terrible legacy of Zambia’s lead mines

10th June 2017

From The Guardian: Zambia’s Kabwe is the world’s most toxic town, according to pollution experts, where mass lead poisoning has almost certainly damaged the brains and other organs of generations of children –who continue to be poisoned every day. The lead levels in Kabwe are as much as 100 times that of recommended safety levels….

A Jarawa tribal receiving handout from tourist - a scene from the Andaman Trunk Road

Scmp.com

Bookshelf

How a statist vision of development has brought Andaman’s tribals close to extinction

21st April 2017

Excerpt from Islands in Flux, by Pankaj Sekhsaria: These communities of thousands of individuals with a living lineage going back thousands of years have been brought to this sorry state in a mere 150 years. It began with the British and their policies, which have been kept up with clinical efficiency by modern, independent India….

Adani group chairman Gautam Adani is known to be close to PM Modi

ENERGY

Vaishali Patil: Exposing Adani’s environmental and labour abuses

16th April 2017

I’ve come face to face with some of the world’s worst companies, but at the top of that list is mining giant Adani, which wants to develop one of the world’s largest coalmines in Australia, supposedly to meet demand from India. But the communities I work with patently do not want Adani or its coal….

The Adani group's mega coalmine is facing stiff protests from Australian activists

Green Left Weekly

CLIMATE CRISIS

Adani’s Australia mine is the line in the sand for the planet’s climate future

31st March 2017

Bill McKibben writes: There’s nowhere else on the planet right now where the dichotomy between two potential futures–one where we address the climate change crisis, one where we ignore this momentous threat and continue with business as usual–is playing out in such an explosive way as Australia, with Gautam Adani’s Carmichael mine at its centre….

Gautam Adani with Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Conflict/Dispossession

Adani Power Vs The People Of Jharkhand

13th January 2017

Amit Bhardwaj reports: The Jharkhand Government wants thousands of farmers to give up their multi-crop fertile lands for the Adani power plant. The plant will sell its entire electricity produce to Bangladesh. “They’ve used 1932 land records to show that a majority of the land here is not being used for agriculture,” said Vidya Devi….

Conflict/Dispossession

The Jharkhand Model of Development: Resources for investors, bullets for villagers

29th December 2016

When seven deaths have not stirred the government’s conscience, Rai is convinced that the resistance is futile. “The worst pain in the world is the pain of being displaced,” said Rai. “But the fact is neither political protests nor public demand can stop displacement. We’ll have to leave this village, our fields and our history.”…

Development/Growth

On burning ground: The human cost of India’s push to produce more coal

20th March 2016

Fred Pearce reports: As part of India’s modernization program, Prime Minister Narenda Modi has called for doubling the nation’s coal production by 2020. If it moves forward, India seems set to create a mounting tide of victims — from the cycle-wallahs and refugees of Jharia’s coal fires, to the country’s air quality, to the planet’s climate….

CLIMATE CRISIS

NEWS UPDATE #84

24th February 2016

January was the globe’s most unusually warm month ever recorded, and the past three months have been the most unusually warm three-month period on record as well, according to NASA. It is the combination of manmade global warming and a record strong El Niño that’s bumped up temperatures to never-before-seen levels since at least 1880….

Conflict/Dispossession

Video & Report: The jungle gangs of Jharkhand

14th February 2016

Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava reports: Groups like JJMP and TSPC thrive on a levy collected from mining. Jharkhand accounts for nearly a third of India’s coal, a quarter of its iron ore and 16% of copper. In return, the armed groups provide protection to mining companies and intimidate villagers to facilitate land acquisition for the companies….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Documentary: India’s Coal Addiction

26th August 2015

TheWire.in [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lJNIBXMz0A] One of the first pledges made by Narendra Modi’s government was that it would look to double the amount of coal India extracted, from the 565 million tons in 2014 to 1 billion tonnes by 2020. The government said it was a necessary measure to ensure development as well as provide power to…