A new study capturing how coal mining transforms land use over time demonstrates the challenges in restoring this land upon mine closure – an important aspect of a just transition as India plans to move away from coal.
Three functional coal mines in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh degraded 35 per cent of the area’s native land cover, the study, conducted by researchers from various institutes, found. The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Environmental Science in July.
Coal production and mining is expected to grow till 2040, before being phased down in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. The damaging environmental impacts of coal mining are well known, but repurposing and restoring this land is emerging as the next frontier for the energy transition.
According to the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology (iFOREST), a think tank, 440,000 (4.4 lakh) hectares of land are currently used for mining and thermal power production in India, most of it concentrated in the eastern coal belt of the country. Over the last 10 years, coal public sector undertakings have increased their green cover by only 18,849 hectares, a fraction of the land that mines currently occupy.
Coal mining regulations have made it easier for mines to expand their operations with fewer compliances. In 2021, the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change said mines could begin operations in non-forest parts of a coal block, even if the entire block was pending final forest clearance. In 2022, the Ministry allowed mines to expand their production capacities from 40 per cent to 50 per cent without public consultations.
The reclamation of mined-out land is compulsory upon mine closure, but there’s still a “long way to go” in terms of implementation, said Subodh K. Maiti, a professor of environmental engineering at the Indian School of Mines, who has written extensively on the topic.
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Companies should document which native species are found in the area as well as its growth pattern, and plant those species and density accordingly. Ideally, these plantations should attract avifauna, biodiversity and be useful for local communities who access them.
Subodh Maiti, professor, Indian School of Mines
“There’s been progress, but existing guidelines are not fully comprehensive when it comes to creating a system or legal framework for the ecological restoration of this land,” he said.
Land transformation over time
The Frontiers study monitored land use changes from the Sohagpur and Jamua Kotma mines in Madhya Pradesh, and the Bishrampur mine in Chhattisgarh, over three decades to observe the extent to which mining changed the topography and landscape. The total area monitored was 14,660 square kilometers.
The study found that on average, from 1994 to 2022, mining reduced forest cover by 7.32 per cent–17.61 per cent, shrunk water bodies by 5.0 per cent–10 per cent, and led to the loss of agricultural land by 3 per cent–5 per cent. The study relied predominantly on Landsat satellite data to determine changes in land use.
According to a government press release, Bishrampur stands out as a “a benchmark for sustainable mining and responsible land reclamation.” Of the 1472 hectares of the coal field that was closed, 319 hectares of forest land and 906.82 hectares of non-forest land was reclaimed over the last decade into a “thriving ecosystem of native (plant) species.”
However Bishrampur’s forest cover decreased the most out of the three sites included in the study. From 1994 to 2022, Bishrampur lost 38 per cent of its forest cover, compared to Sohagpur (34 per cent) and Jamuna & Kotma (22 per cent). The area under plantation – a necessary stipulation for diverting forest land for mining – increased by only 2.03 per cent in Bishrampur, the study found. It increased by 4.30 per cent in Sohagpur and 9.67 per cent in Jamuna & Kotma.
“The plantations make up a very small proportion of what has been lost due to mining, and it is also far less than what is supposed to have come up under compensatory afforestation,” said Tarun K. Thakur, lead author of the study and head of the Department of Environmental Science at Indira Gandhi National Tribal University.
Other researchers who contributed to the study were from Indira Gandhi Agricultural University, and Jindal Global School of Business, among others.
The researchers also constructed a Land Degradation Vulnerability Index by combining five other indices which look at the different dimensions of land vulnerability. These include a soil index, climate index, terrain index, land utilisation index, and natural resource prioritised index.
It found that across all three sites, the “expanding area with moderate and steep slopes are increasing the degree of vulnerability to land degradation,” with heightened overburden leading to more water and wind erosion. Mining also led the land to become more vulnerable to climatic aberrations like erratic rainfall, high evaporation, high temperature, and low humidity conditions.
“Native plants are removed during mining operations, and since native trees seldom reestablish themselves in the harsh conditions of mines, they are often replaced by grasses and invasive alien species, which offer less protection” from erosion, the study says.
Sohagpur showed less vulnerability overall compared to Jamua and Kotma and Bishrampur coal fields, according to the analysis. “Reducing the height and steepness of the overburden and adding plantations can help stabilise the land and reduce its vulnerability,” Thakur said.
Monitoring mines upon closure
The restoration of land used for mining needs more than just plantations, said Maiti. In the past, coal companies established vegetation cover on degraded land by planting fast growing, exotic, and high biomass yielding tree species.
“Today, there is an understanding that native species should be used, but how they should be used isn’t always properly planned,” he said, adding, “Companies should document which native species are found in the area as well as its growth pattern, and plant those species and density accordingly. Ideally, these plantations should attract avifauna, biodiversity, and be useful for local communities who access them, and they need to be monitored closely for survivability.”
Coal India Limited and its subsidiaries currently monitor land reclamation of 76 opencast mines that are in operation. The main objective is to assess, through remote sensing and satellite imagery, the area under backfilling (filling mine voids), plantation, water bodies, forest land, and agricultural land in the leasehold area of the projects. The report does not, however, monitor the species composition used in reclamation activities.
The Ministry of Coal’s report on Greening Initiatives in Coal and Lignite PSUs, released in February this year, says future plans for land reclamation can be done on 36,100.4 hectares of land, and plantations on an additional 13,040 hectares.
“It is suggested to have periodic ground truth surveys for sites where plantation has been undertaken to gauge the survivability and self-sustenance of the species and plan necessary remedial actions, if necessary,” the report says.
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
