The small five-hectare patch of multi-species forest on an artificial mountain, created during extraction of coal, at Nigahi mine of Singrauli-based Northern Coalfields (NCL) is a feast for the eyes amidst the widespread destruction of nature and the patchy re-plantation that is so common to open-cast mining.

For an 18 million-tonne-capacity opencast mine that lays waste 60 hectares of forests, mountains and valleys in the Vindhyachal every year, creating a five-hectare oasis barely makes a difference, except that it is a pilot initiated by the Dehra Dun-based Forest Research Institute (FRI) in 2014 to showcase quality eco-restoration processes.

The initiative is important.

NCL and six other mining subsidiaries of state-owned Coal India (CIL) produced 567 million tonne of the fuel in 2017-18. As much as 95 per cent of the fuel was extracted through the opencast method, the highest among all major coal producing nations.

This devastating on the nature. CIL cuts open up to 3,000 hectares every year, and the dug up earth is heaped in the mined areas (called over-burden or OB dump). Since coal is available mostly in forested areas, the green cover becomes a casualty to the nation’s energy hunger.

By law, it is mandatory for CIL, and other miners, to compensate for the green cover lost in the mined out areas. Besides the green cess the government collects, miners spend hundreds of crores of rupees in re-plantation through State forest departments.

But visit any coalfield and you will find that greening is half-hearted.

Usually, a couple of fast- growing varieties are planted. The slopes of the OB dump mostly remain bald. And, whatever green is visible in the mined areas, it has taken at least 20 years to grow.

Eco-restoration

But the FRI process can create a forest — complete with grass, shrubs, and trees — double-quick. At Nigahi, for example, in just three years a green cover of 15-20-feet tall rosewood, mango, guava, neem, bamboo, pongam and other local varieties has been created.

“It is restoration of the entire ecology, not just re-plantation, wherein we make artificial interventions to accelerate the natural process of vegetation,” says HB Vasistha, former head of forest ecology and climate change division of FRI.

He was associated with eco-restoration work for nearly three decades starting with projects at phosphate and limestone mines around Dehra Dun, following a Supreme Court order in 1985. In the coal sector, FRI did pioneering work in Sizua area of the Dhanbad-based Bharat Coking Coal, another CIL subsidiary, in 2011. The pilot caught the eye of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and soon the model was replicated on 44 hectares.

“We have done extensive work in BCCL, and established that quality green cover can be restored on OB dump slopes. BCCL is now replicating the model in more collieries, based on FRI recommendations,” Vasistha said.

Unsustainable mining

But is the practice gaining momentum?

Though CIL chairman Anil Kumar Jha emphasises that it is a priority, the results of such restoration are not visible yet.

BCCL claims to have implemented the model on over 100 hectares, but this is not much for a company that destroys thousands of hectares to produce 33 mt fuel a year.

FRI recently submitted a roadmap to NCL, based on the pilot, but its fate is yet to be decided.

Observers blame the lack of policy push for the slow progress. Successive governments, since coal mining nationalisation in 1975, have only pushed CIL to produce low-cost fuel, to generate cheap electricity, without much care to sustainable mining practices, they say.

“Eco-restoration comes at a cost. Till the nation decides to pay for it, environment will suffer,” said a coal company official.

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