Expansion Of Coal Mining Research Articles

Patterns of infringement, risk, and impact driven by coal mining permits in Indonesia

Coal mining is known for its contributions to climate change, but its impacts on the environment and human lives near mine sites are less widely recognised. This study integrates remote sensing, GIS, stakeholder interviews and extensive review of provincial data and documents to identify patterns of infringement, risk and impact driven by coal mining expansion across East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Specifically, we map and analyse patterns of mining concessions, land clearing, water cover, human settlement, and safety risks, and link them with mining governance and regulatory infractions related to coal mining permits. We show that excessive, improper permit granting and insufficient monitoring and oversight have led to deforestation, widespread overlaps of concessions with settlements, extensive boundary and regulatory violations, lacking reclamation, and numerous deaths. As the world’s largest thermal coal exporter, Indonesia’s elevated coal infringements, risks, and impacts translate to supply chain, sustainability, and human rights concerns for global coal markets.

Agrarian change through speculation: Rural elites as land brokers for mining in Colombia

AbstractThis paper studies the connections between the expansion of mining capital, speculative forms of land grabbing and agrarian transformation. It is argued that in periods of commodity boom, the landowning rural elite benefits from mining through speculative land deals with mining companies. They act as ‘land brokers’ for the mining firms, helping them to overcome a significant barrier to land accumulation through the de facto abolition of landed property. The analysis is based on a qualitative case study on the expansion of coal mining in central Cesar in northern Colombia. To develop my arguments, I refer to the concept of accumulation by dispossession as defined by Michael Levien, and historical materialist approaches on rent, and speculative land dispossession. In addition, I use concepts developed for studying coercive land grabbing and agrarian elite participation in armed conflicts to analyse the mechanisms applied to (coercively) acquire rights to land. It is concluded that with high global prices for minerals, metals and fossil fuels, the expansion of mining in the countryside fosters a process of agrarian change through land speculation that is articulated in a reconcentration of landed property, a re‐strengthening of the rural landowning elite and the dissolution of peasant agriculture.

Incumbents’ Strategies in Media Coverage: A Case of the Czech Coal Policy

Transitioning to a decarbonized economy is a crucial part of climate change mitigation, with the phasing-out of coal, as the most significant source of carbon dioxide emissions, being the centerpiece of this effort. In the European context, the increasing pressures exerted especially on the basis of the European Union’s energy and climate policy, coupled with the inherent uncertainty of the transition process, encourage various struggles among the involved policy actors over the setting of specific transition pathways. One site of such contestation is media discourse, which may facilitate or limit policy change through agenda-setting, framing, and other processes. Importantly, discursive struggles also include industry incumbents, who have a vested interest in preserving the existing sociotechnical regime. This article focuses on the position of incumbents in terms of their relationship with governing political parties and the discursive strategies they employ. It explores the policy debate on coal mining expansion which took place in 2015 in the Czech Republic, a post-communist country with a coal-dependent economy, a skeptical position on energy transition, and a powerful energy industry. The research employs discourse network analysis to examine a corpus compiled from daily newspapers and applies block modeling techniques to analyze patterns of relationships within and between actor groups. The results show that incumbents successfully prevented policy change in the direction of rapid coal phase-out by exploiting discourse alignment with governing parties and efficiently employing discursive strategies based primarily on securitization of socioeconomic issues.

Response of the Indigenous Basap Dayak Community to Settlement Relocation by Coal Mining Company in East Kutai District, Kalimantan, Indonesia

The massive expansion and exploitation of coal mining has caused social and environmental impact on surrounding communities that caused the vanished of agricultural land and even land for settlement. The expansion of coal mining has caused the impacted communities need to relocated in other areas so that mining company could exploit the coal in accordance with the operating standard. The purposes of this study were to assess the community's response after they relocated to new settlement in Matiro Wali village. For data collection, around 40 respondents already interviewed using Structured Questionnaires. Respondents were given three options to express their response to each question: "satisfied”, "fair” and "less”. The data were tabulated and presented in percentage and graphics. Some aspects of assessment were the process of relocation, housing and sanitation, infrastructure development and road access, condition of social and economic facilities, agricultural land, hunting and fishing ground, and the potential future livelihoods. Results show that the Basap Dayak community complained the social economic condition in the relocation village. They complained about the bad access road to village/relocation area, the limitation of agricultural land that only 200 ha, limitation of hunting and fishing ground. The uncertainty rights over the agricultural land in the new settlement also caused the villagers unwilling to be relocated. The responses of the respondents to some aspects of social and economic condition in a new relocation area are mostly not satisfied with the existing condition. For example, in term of house development, around 57% respondents think ‘satisfied, 28% "fair” and the rest 15 "less”; in term of economic life around 46.6% "fair”, 49% "less” and only 7.2% feel "satisfied' with the economic life. Access to agricultural land also does not satisfy the respondents because the size is limited; development of road to relocation area is the most complained aspect by villagers because the road is very bad so that it could not be passed through in rainy season; hunting and fishing are the traditional ways of life of the Basap Dayak.

The expansion of coal mining in the depression areas – a way to development? - See more at: http://www.humangeographies.org.ro/81-toc#sthash.MADTV1Ic.dpuf

The expansion of coal mining in the depression areas – a way to development? - See more at: http://www.humangeographies.org.ro/81-toc#sthash.MADTV1Ic.dpuf

Using input-output analysis to estimate the impact of a coal industry expansion on regional and local economies

Since 2004, there has been a major expansion of coal mining in Queensland, Australia. While there have been significant demographic, social and economic impacts at local, regional and state levels, the size and type of impacts are difficult to quantify. This analysis is of the economic impacts of the projected coal mining expansion in the key mining area of Central Highlands regional economy. It is part of the Bowen Basin region. Impacts were also modelled for two smaller communities: the former Duaringa and Bauhinia Shires. The results provide a guide to the size of the distribution of impacts from the coal mining expansion and the potential impacts at the local level. The model had to be adjusted to take account of how a non-resident workforce would transfer impacts from the local or subregional area where the project was located to other regions where the population is based. The results demonstrate how ‘fly-in/fly-out’ or ‘drive-in/drive-out’ employment patterns can reduce the level of economic impacts to local economies.

Health Effects of Energy-Generating Sources

To the Editor.— The American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs does not appear to have performed its evaluation of the health effects of energy-generating sources with a view toward the ultimate purpose of its analysis (240:2193, 1978). The document is of interest as a summary of the occupational health risks associated with nuclear and fossil-fuel power production in the recent past, but it is not adequate to serve as a guide to future policy for the following reasons: The risks attributed to coal mining reflect hazards associated with underground mining. 1,2 The expansion of coal mining under the National Energy Plan, especially in the western states where the potential for future production is greatest, will be preponderantly surface mining. 3,4 The AMA council report bases its evaluation on extrapolation from the most hazardous coal extraction technology rather than the technology that will in fact be employed. Surface mining

The Wilkins Lecture - Sir Humphry Davy, Bt., P. R. S. 1778–1829

A visitor to the Society’s apartments passes on the staircase, first the bust of our Royal Founder and Patron by Nollekens and then the romantic portrait by Lawrence of the most romantic of our Presidents, Humphry Davy, whose name, next to that of Newton, is the most widely remembered of them all. And rightly so, for it was his discovery of the principle of the safety-lamp that made possible the great expansion of coal mining, the basis of our national wealth. It removed so largely the risk of explosions and saved untold human agony and suffering. The invention of the lamp, based as it was on a fortnight’s brilliant work in the laboratory, was typical of Davy’s genius for making a decisive experiment. Davy’s scientific work was done mainly in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. It was a formative period in which chemistry having shaken off the leading strings of medicine and pharmacy was emerging as an independent science. It was a time of great activity in chemical research. Every year saw some new line of attack and a new harvest of chemical discoveries. Lavoisier had established the balance as the arbiter of the chemical balance-sheet but the laws of chemical composition only came to light in the new century. Dalton’s atomic weights had opened a new chapter of the atomic theory and by 1820 Berzelius’s chemical formulae were fast becoming the chemists’ shorthand for the communication of their results.