Completed Project

Transition of coal mine communities towards sustainable lives and livelihoods (Trans-Mine) Phase I

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Transition of coal mine communities towards sustainable lives and livelihoods (Trans-Mine) Phase I

India is among the largest producers of coal, iron ore, bauxite, zinc and mica. As the country’s energy sector transitions to meet its net zero commitment, it is expected to trigger major changes in its mining sector and strategy. Coal is expected to gradually decline in importance.
About 299 coal mines have been identified as abandoned, discontinued, or closed (so far) by the Ministry of Coal. Coal India Ltd has taken proactive steps towards the closure of these mines.
The closure of coal mines is expected to impact around 500,000 jobs/livelihoods and around 100,000 hectares of land and associated natural resources.
With this background, the Ashoka Centre for a People- centric Energy Transition (ACPET) commissioned a project to “facilitate smooth transition of coal mining communities towards sustainable lives and livelihoods”.

Outreach

Objectives

The objective of the project is to study, develop and demonstrate approaches to facilitate smooth transitioning of mining communities towards sustainable lives and livelihoods.

MACRO LEVEL

The project seeks to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and affected groups to:

Understand socio-economic impacts of mine closure

Analyse and feed into the mine closure strategies and policies

Chalk out people-centric mine closure approaches and interventions

Inform policy discourse

Site Specific

Understand mine closure impacts on key stakeholders:

Finally, the team will co-design interventions in partnership with relevant government authority and the impacted communities and facilitate demonstration pilots (on ground) of a selected few identified intervention(s).

Methodology

The site-specific primary research survey project used a mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) approach to document the impacted communities- the nature of this impact, their needs and aspirations, and what needs to be done at the community and individual level to support the said transition sustainably. As a part of this process, the team first undertook a formative research visit to understand the sites, interact with the mine dependent communities, the impacts they have faced due to coal mine discontinuity, and ascertain the different groups of people who were most affected - directly or indirectly. This helped the team to design the survey tools. Following this, a detailed survey was conducted along with analysis and reporting. The first stage of the project, including the survey has been concluded, and a varied list of recommendations for interventions has been drawn out; a few of these will be selected at the community and individual level for demonstration.

Stakeholders

Local communities around abandoned mines

Central and State Governments

Additional District Collector and Line Departments

District Mineral Foundation

Ministry of Coal

Mining Institutes

National and International Development Agencies

Civil Society

Policy and Regulatory Experts

Project Site

The project site for the study is the currently discontinued Rajhara coal mines, a colliery of the Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), located in the Daltonganj Coalfield of Jharkhand. The mine was first shut in 2010, due to inundation of the mines, reopened in 2019 after receiving environmental clearance and then discontinued due to land acquisition and other local issues. The site is specifically chosen to understand the layered impact of mine closure on communities linked to these mines.