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How weak checks and balances in mining are destroying forests and livelihoods in India -M Rajshekhar
-The Economic Times
Mining
When asked where the coal blocks will come up, the forest officer draws a clover-shaped map. Take the right at the traffic intersection, he says, and you will enter Pathriya Dand coal block. Keep going for 11 km and the road turns to the left, which is where Gidhmudi coal block is. Come back to the main road, cross over to the other side, and you will enter Madanpur North.

Keep moving south through it, and you will reach Madanpur South in 15 minutes. There is Parsa, to the north of Madanpur North. And Sagbadi to the south of the Madanpur blocks.

That is six coal blocks within touching distance of each other. We are at Hasdeo Arand — one of the last remnants of the great forests that once covered much of central India. Between 2003 and 2009, while allotting coal blocks to companies for captive use, the coal ministry, without so much as a consultation with the environment ministry, allotted as many as 16 blocks in and around this forest.

When the block awardees approached the environment ministry for clearance, this ominous intrusion into pristine forests for coal mining was one of the triggers for Jairam Ramesh, the minister in 2010, to introduce the concept of 'go' and 'no go' areas for mining — essentially, half of the reserved forests were out of bounds for industry. He refused to clear several of these 16 blocks. Both ministries occupied entrenched positions.

Ramesh said Hasdeo Arand was too good a forest to lose. The coal ministry pointed to India's coal shortage. Since that face-off, environment has a new minister. The ministry has allowed mining in two-thirds of the forest areas in nine coalfields and is under pressure from the coal ministry to scrap the no-go concept and open up the remaining one-third too.

As India starts handing out coal blocks again, a process marred by crony capitalism and state discretion the last time around, the question arises: must our forests, already in terminal quantitative and qualitative decline, be sacrificed for coal? In mid-2012, Alok Perti, the coal secretary between 2011 and 2012, told ET: "India has to decide whether she wants electricity or tigers." Adds BK Agarwal, who heads Godavari Ispat, a sponge iron company in Ranchi whose captive block in Hasdeo Arand is awaiting a green nod: "India has 700,000 sq km of forests. The total mining area is just 21,000 sq km. If we say no power plant, there will be darkness in the country.

We have to find a balance." Numbers and facts, however, show this line of argument — coal or forests — is simplistic: it underplays the importance of forests in preserving life as we know it and overplays the economic need to uproot forests for coal. Why Forests Matter Forests provide wildlife corridors for fauna — notably tigers, elephants and leopards — to move from one protected area to another, says Ravi Chellam, a wildlife biologist with the Madras Crocodile Bank and Trust, a research and conservation outfit.

"Forests are also watersheds for local rivers, a bulwark against climate change and support livelihoods of local communities," he adds. According to the Forest Survey of India (FSI), India's forests are in better shape than ever: cover has increased to 692,000 sq km in 2011, from 654,000 sq km in 2001. But independent researchers say the numbers are based on a flawed definition of a forest. The FSI defines a forest as any patch of land, with at least 10% tree cover, independent of tree species or land ownership.

 So, it also counts tea estates and urban parks. A 2011 paper titled 'Cryptic Destruction of India's Native Forests', by researcher Priya Davidar and others, states that native forests fell to 390,000 sq km in 2005, from 514,000 sq km in 1995. Even that number doesn't give the full picture. All the coalfields are in central India, while the forest number — be it 692,000 sq km or 390,000 sq km — is for all of India.

Earlier this year, Greenpeace and Bangalorebased Ashoka Trust for Research into Ecology and the Environment, studied the impact coal mining would have on the central India forests. They took the geographical coordinates for 13 major coalfields from the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI), India's apex coal-planning institute, and superimposed those on FSI maps. The findings were stark.

The 13 coalfields occupied an area of 30,083 sq km, of which, 7,590 sq km was demarcated for coal. The area under forests — very dense forests, moderately dense forests and open forests — was 11,040 sq km. If these coalfields were fully opened up, these forests would vanish. Coal Aplenty Outside Forests ET sent questionnaires to Coal India, the coal ministry and the CMPDI, asking them about coal reserves outside forests, and in 'go' and 'no-go' areas. Coal India said it doesn't have such information, the other two did not respond.

 Still, some reasonable guesstimates can be made. CMPDI estimates India's proven coal reserves at 118 billion tonnes (BT), 25%-30% of which lies in forested areas. That leaves about 80 BT outside. About 90% of India's mines are open-cast mines (as opposed to underground ones). Last year, during a severe indictment of the last coal-allotment process, the government's auditor had estimated that 73% of the reserves of an open-cast mine can be extracted — or, 58.4 BT. Coal India chairman Narsingh Rao estimates 6 BT have been used in the last 30 years.

That means India can still extract 52 BT without touching its forests. At an extraction rate of 1,000 million tonnes (MT) a year, that's enough for 52 years. A similar amount is available in the 'go' areas that have been cleared. India currently needs about 600 MT of coal a year. 'Ease' Of Mining Forests If there is ample coal outside, why go after these last remaining wisps of once great forests first? That's because mining the 118 BT outside forests is fraught with other problems.

 Take Coal India, which has a monopoly on coal and whose output has stagnated at around 430 MT in the last three fiscal years. North Karanpara, Mand Raigarh and Ib Valley — which, chairman Rao says, can output 250 MT a year — are producing a fraction due to the lack of a railway link. Land acquisition issues bog blocks like Kusmunda, Gevra and Dipka, which have about 10 BT of reserves.

A senior forest officer in the environment ministry, says on condition of anonymity, that reserved forests are easier prey. A company does not have to negotiate with many people to acquire their land or take care of their rehabilitation. Then, unlike wildlife sanctuaries, national parks or tiger reserves, India's environment laws offer a lower degree of protection to coal-laden forests.

With regard to the blocks given out, the coal ministry and companies painted themselves into a corner. "There is neither any policy of allotment of alternative blocks nor indeed would there be availability of alternative coal blocks in such numbers," says a cabinet note written in 2010 by former coal secretary Perti. And so, the coal ministry is pushing the environment ministry to clear these blocks. Companies allotted captive blocks are doing their own lobbying.

A thermal power plant is not competitive without a captive block. Even sponge-iron companies are struggling. Take Godavari Ispat, whose coal block lies in a 'no go' area and its coal linkage — essentially, a supply commitment from CIL — is being cut by 25% each year. "We are now importing coal from South Africa," says Agarwal. For companies like his, survival depends on operationalising the coal block. Egregious practices are under way here.

Says Lakshmi Chouhan, an activist in Korba: "Companies are having the forest department carry out disproportionately heavy logging where the block lies. By the time the company applies for a forest clearance, the tract is denuded." Polarised Debate There are problems in the way India resolves her environment-development debate. The coal ministry hands out blocks in forests without checking with the environment ministry, or exploring the relative merits of meeting a company's needs through a captive mine versus a linkage.

Take Chotia, a captive block in Hasdeo Arand with about 35 MT of reserves, allotted to Prakash Industries. Chouhan says 1,500 hectares of forest land is being lost to produce about 1 MT of coal a year. Wouldn't it have been better to give Prakash a coal linkage? Or take Mahan, the block that will meet the power needs of Essar and Hindalco for about 14 years. Why not give them a bigger block elsewhere instead of taking a wildlife corridor out? Chhattisgarh scrapped the Lemru-proposed elephant reserve in Hasdeo Arand after the Confederation of Indian Industry wrote to it that the country stood to lose 40 MTPA of coal and 4,300 MW of power projects because of it.

Of the nine companies allotted blocks here, two have had the CBI slap FIRs on them for misrepresentation; and district officials say no more than two will set up power plants. In the years to come, India will be among the worst-hit by climate change: we are overpopulated, our rivers are rainfed, and we are lopping off the very forests that trap this rain and birth the rivers feeding much of central and southern India. And, at this time, there is little evidence that coordinated planning is being done between the coal, user and environment ministries on how to balance the environment-development tradeoffs.