THE impact of mining spreads across all aspects of the environment biophysical and psycho-cultural and is largely by virtue of the geological and ecological conditions of mining. Therefore, accepting the nature of the impact, the industry needs to evolve mitigation measures to contain the damage, and the regulatory authorities are duty-bound to ensure that the sector and the specific industries comply with the highest standards. However, the expectations, both from the industry, of genuine efforts to mitigate the impact, and from the state, particularly the regulators, of enforcing the rule of law are misplaced in the current context.
A look at the biophysical environment around mining from across a section of mines in the country is instructive. As an illustration, take the case of water. Mining is one of the major industrial activities impacting the availability and quality of water. Mining, from small-scale quarrying to deep underground mining, and in the new area of coal bed methane extraction, impacts water. The proposed underground coal gasification will also have an impact.
The impact is far-reaching, but the governance processes still come from a state of denial. Mining and allied industries are the biggest destroyers of natural water storage capacity and the most important cause for the deterioration of water quality. The future of water resources is seriously at stake.
The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) suggests that intersection of the water table by the mining industries may be taken seriously as in several places the major resources lie beneath the water table. The breaching of the water table must be subject to stricter regulation than there is at present as the very basis of survival of local communities is sacrificed at this stage. Merely to say that mine water is put to gainful use misses the point that such use can lead to unsustainable management of the aquifer. While this may include supplying water to adjacent areas, local communities and water distribution agencies, besides utilisation for dust suppression and other purposes by the industry and for artificial recharge, it will be tantamount to mining water.
Neyveli in Tamil Nadu is a good example of how mining has impacted regional water resources and also induced the threat of seawater incursion. The surface topography and drainage have been obliterated and the accompanying power plant, too, adds to the impact on water resources.
It is an irony that people from an area where water occurred in an artesian condition and water swelled over land before the initiation of lignite mining are today forced to depend upon the State government and the mining company for water, and that too water supplied at very low pressure and intermittently.
However, despite the practise of precautionary principles being touted by the government and even the courts, the giant Jayamkondan lignite mining project in Tiruchi district in Tamil Nadu is on the anvil without any serious research or effort to understand the impact and formulate adequate precautionary measures.
At the other extreme is the fact that at no mine in the country the issues of resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) have been completed even to some degree of satisfaction of the oustees. The dispossession, impoverishment and trauma attached to displacement can probably never be captured with the level of sensitivity that any mitigation demands. In between lies a whole range of impacts such as pollution from the mining activity and from transportation, which is largely by road.
The real concern over the environmental and social impact, whose neglect led recently to the classification of over 70 locations as critically polluted, prominent among them being the mining-industrial complexes, and the often non-violent and sometimes violent protests of the community, with over 200 locations being locked in conflicts, is the scale of expansion being projected in the near future.
The massive increase in the power production targets will require the mining of almost twice the amount of coal that is mined at present in the country. The regulators, who are not able to manage the 561 mines at present, will, in the next decade, need to be equipped to handle at least twice as much work. Considering the shortcomings of the entire process, from the prospecting stage to the closure, it can be surmised that more places will come into the category of severely polluted zones.
As a corollary to this, more and more States are being linked inextricably to this destructive enterprise for their economic sustenance, and any reversal from it will only add to the worsening quality of life of the people around the mine. While the problems of the legally operating mines themselves look insurmountable, India has the dubious distinction of having more illegal mines than legal ones. There are around 8,784 major mineral leases spread across the country, apart from thousands of leases for minor minerals and quarries.
A Parliamentary Committee on Illegal Mining identified 14,504 illegal mines in 2005. Its report states: The government in its efforts to promote and develop mining sector had taken a number of steps and commissioned studies from time to time under the National Mineral Policy, 1993. But, the impact thereof has been far from satisfactory and the exploration and development of mineral wealth of the country remained unproductive both economically and socially.
It adds: The conservation as well as systematic and scientific harnessing of mineral resources is the bedrock of economic development of a nation. However, unscientific and unlawful mining has been thriving endlessly causing not only immense loss to the national exchequer but destruction of natural environment.
Figures released recently by the Ministry of Mines estimates the number of illegal mines for major minerals at 2,496 and for minor minerals at a whopping 28,055. The proposed new mining Act will enhance the scale of impact as the limit for a single lease area is sought to be raised to 100 sq km. While the largest mine lease currently is of the order of 2000 hectares, a fivefold increase in the area of lease will have widespread regional ramifications.
In the interest of the long-term conservation of the environment and respecting the laws already in place to protect the environment and the community, Mines, Minerals and People (MM&P), an alliance of mining-affected communities, demands a moratorium on new mines. New leases could be given when illegal mining is removed; the closed, abandoned and orphaned mines are restored; strict compliance is sought at the unit level; and brownfield expansion is encouraged as against greenfield mining. These activities, if undertaken seriously, will not diminish economic growth significantly and will pave the way for a more systematic utilisation of non-renewable resources.
This calls for a rationalisation of the management of natural resources, stricter due diligence during the grant of lease and accompanying environmental and forest clearances, and a vigilant society to be able to stem the abysmal state of affairs.
R. Sreedhar is managing trustee, Environics Trust, and Convener, Mines, Minerals and People.
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