Rethinking ‘just transitions’ from coal: the dynamics of land and labour in anti-coal struggles

Abstract

Communities resisting large coal mining projects navigate the significant tensions between imperatives of urgent climate action and economic growth in complex and contingent ways. Drawing on empirical research in a mining region of Central-Eastern India, this paper examines how the changing ‘agrarian’ context of rural livelihoods and household reproduction within mining-affected communities shapes the motivations of local anti-coal struggles, and the articulation of climate-change related concerns within them. It argues that such a conceptualization of political contestations over coal extraction points to crucial possibilities for building broader counter-hegemonic movements for more inclusive ‘just transitions’ away from coal.

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