50% of reclaimed coal mine area of Coal India is ‘barren’

Coal India said it has been converting several excavated coal mines into healthy green zones since 2008. But when the ministry examined the area through Google Earth, it found major differences in what was said in the presentation and what could be seen through Google’s satellites.

Updated on: Jul 12, 2015, 01:57:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Around half of the 211 sq kms that the country’s biggest coal mining company, Coal India, claims have been planted with trees have actually been found to be barren, forcing the environment ministry to seek an explanation from it.

Mining companies are required to provide funds to plant trees on an area equal to or double that of the area of forests they cut down for their projects, known as compensatory afforestation.

During its presentation at the last meeting of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the environment ministry, Coal India said it has been converting several excavated coal mines into healthy green zones since 2008. But when the ministry examined the area through Google Earth, it found major differences in what was said in the presentation and what could be seen through Google’s satellites.

An official source said that no green cover was visible on at least 50% of the area on which Coal India claimed to have planted trees. “It was a barren coal mining area,” an official said, adding that the FAC has sought an explanation from Coal India for this discrepancy.

“We have asked for each company of Coal India and other mining companies to furnish complete details of reclamation done,” the official said.
The ministry has decided to seek a “real picture” of afforestation carried out in the country by mining companies.

A 2014 Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report found that of the 1,03,390 hectares over which trees were to be planted since 2002, the environment ministry had a record of afforestation on only 7% of the land.

The Centre for Science and Environment, in its flagship State of Environment (SoE) Report in 2014, also asserted that compensatory afforestation was poor in many states, of which seven states - Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Punjab and Rajasthan – had seen no compensatory afforestation at all. Only Assam and Odisha had showed a high level of afforestation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More