Singrauli town in Madhya Pradesh is soon to be vanished as Coal India wants to mine the 600 MT of coal lying underneath. Wonder what will happen to Delhi if precious minerals are found under it.
For the people, this must be the 4th displacement in the past 6-decades. In 1962, 142 villages were displaced for the Rihand dam, one of the ‘temples of modern India’. In the early 80’s they were again displaced for the coal mines, and later for the World Bank funded Singrauli Thermal Power Project and other thermal plants. In the past 20 odd years, a spate of industries came up there. Sasan Power Project owned by Reliance, along with a number of power plants, like Chitrangi Power Project, Mahan Super Thermal Power Project, Jaypee Nigrie Super Thermal Power Project and others. Mahan coal mining, Aluminium smelter plant etc are other massive projects which caused displacement as well as clear-felling of forests, in a place which once was celebrated as the energy capital of India. With another impending massive displacement for mining coal, at a time on international platforms India announces panchamrit and claims to be the leader on renewable energy production, it will be another blot on India’s development story.
The ‘finance CoP’ currently underway in Baku seem to be heading towards resulting into something far below the expectations and requirements to meet the climate crisis. The new draft of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) proposed $455-584 billion per year, while conservative estimates say the requirement is $1 trillion for both just transition and adaptation. With over 1700 fossil fuel lobbyists given access to CoP29, with 24 of them from India, one can imagine the direction in which the negotiations could move. The only solace is that the number of lobbyists are fewer than some of the previous CoPs. But one also know the disappointing outcomes of most of those. The well-fed, powerful corporate lobbyists are not confined to CoPs. Nearly 200 of them were at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4) to advance a global plastics treaty, putting pressure for slowing progress towards the first global treaty to cut plastic waste.
-Team CFA
Read and Download the Newsletter here: Finance Matters | 15 November 2024