IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/amz/wpaper/2023-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Greening our Laws: Revising Land Acquisition Law for Coal Mining in India

Author

Listed:
  • Srivastav, Sugandha
  • Singh, Tanmay

Abstract

Laws that govern land acquisition can lock in old paradigms. We study one such case: the Coal Bearing Areas Act of 1957 (CBAA) which provides minimal social and environmental safeguards, and deviates in important ways from the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR). The lack of due diligence in the CBAA confers an undue comparative advantage to coal development, which is inconsistent with India's current stance to phasedown coal use, reduce air pollution, and advance modern sources of energy. We argue that the premise under which the CBAA was historically justified is no longer valid due to significant changes in the local context. Namely, the environmental and social costs of coal-based energy are far more salient and the market has cleaner energy alternatives that are cost competitive. We recommend updating land acquisition laws to bring coal under the general purview of LARR or, at minimum, amending CBAA to ensure adequate environmental and social safeguards are in place, both in letter and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Srivastav, Sugandha & Singh, Tanmay, 2023. "Greening our Laws: Revising Land Acquisition Law for Coal Mining in India," INET Oxford Working Papers 2023-07, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:amz:wpaper:2023-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/SrivastavSinghEPW.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tianguang Lu & Peter Sherman & Xinyu Chen & Shi Chen & Xi Lu & Michael McElroy, 2020. "India’s potential for integrating solar and on- and offshore wind power into its energy system," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Cardoso, Andrea, 2015. "Behind the life cycle of coal: Socio-environmental liabilities of coal mining in Cesar, Colombia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 71-82.
    3. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell, 2012. "The Impact of Pollution on Worker Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3652-3673, December.
    4. Hanna Rema Nadeem & Oliva Paulina, 2010. "The Impact of Inspections on Plant-Level Air Emissions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-33, March.
    5. Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala, 2016. "The diverse worlds of coal in India: Energising the nation, energising livelihoods," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 203-213.
    6. Ryan Rafaty & Sugandha Srivastav & Björn Hoops, 2020. "Revoking coal mining permits: an economic and legal analysis," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(8), pages 980-996, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Srivastav, Sugandha & Singh, Tanmay, 2022. "Greening our Laws: Revising Land Acquisition Law for Coal Mining in India," INET Oxford Working Papers 2022-09, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    2. Sugandha Srivastav & Tanmay Singh, 2023. "Greening our Laws: Revising Land Acquisition Law for Coal Mining in India," Papers 2304.14941, arXiv.org.
    3. Syed Hasan & Odmaa Narantungalag, & Martin Berka, 2022. "No pain, no gain? Mining pollution and morbidity," Discussion Papers 2203, School of Economics and Finance, Massey University, New Zealand.
    4. Srivastav, Sugandha & Rafaty, Ryan, 2021. "Five Worlds of Political Strategy in the Climate Movement," INET Oxford Working Papers 2021-07, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    5. Sugandha Srivastav & Michael Zaehringer, 2024. "The Economics of Coal Phaseouts: Auctions as a Novel Policy Instrument for the Energy Transition," Papers 2406.14238, arXiv.org.
    6. Michael Greenstone & Rema Hanna, 2014. "Environmental Regulations, Air and Water Pollution, and Infant Mortality in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3038-3072, October.
    7. Hausman, Catherine & Stolper, Samuel, 2021. "Inequality, information failures, and air pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    8. Tiago Cavalcanti & Kamiar Mohaddes & Hongyu Nian & Haitao Yin, 2023. "Air pollution and firm-level human capital, knowledge and innovation," Working Papers EPRG2301, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    9. Jianglong Li & Shiqiang Sun & Mun Sing Ho, 2024. "Immediate Impacts of Air Pollution on the Performance of Football Players," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(6), pages 753-776, August.
    10. Liu, Xin & Wu, Dewang, 2024. "Does PM2.5 accelerate the firm evolution? Evidence from 800-mm isoline in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    11. Kam C. Chan & Tao Chen & Baohua Liu & Junfeng Wu, 2022. "Air pollution and CEO compensation: Evidence from China," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 448-469, April.
    12. Pushpa Arabindoo, 2020. "Renewable energy, sustainability paradox and the post-urban question," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(11), pages 2300-2320, August.
    13. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Zigan Wang & Wensi Xie, 2018. "Bank Liquidity, Credit Supply, and the Environment," NBER Working Papers 24375, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. de Oliveira, Guilherme & Lima, Gilberto Tadeu, 2022. "Economic growth as a double-edged sword: The pollution-adjusted Kaldor-Verdoorn effect," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    15. Lutz Sager, 2016. "Estimating the effect of air pollution on road safety using atmospheric temperature," GRI Working Papers 251, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    16. He, Xiaobo & Luo, Zijun & Zhang, Junjie, 2022. "The impact of air pollution on movie theater admissions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    17. Alexandra E. Hill & Jesse Burkhardt, 2021. "Peers in the Field: The Role of Ability and Gender in Peer Effects among Agricultural Workers," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(3), pages 790-811, May.
    18. Guignet, Dennis & Jenkins, Robin R. & Belke, James & Mason, Henry, 2023. "The property value impacts of industrial chemical accidents," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    19. Carozzi, Felipe & Roth, Sefi, 2023. "Dirty density: Air quality and the density of American cities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    20. Ziebarth, N. R. & Schmitt, M. & Karlsson, M., 2013. "The short-term population health effects of weather and pollution: implications of climate change," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 13/34, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    coal; land acquisition; environmental protection; social impact assessment; rehabilitation and resettlement.;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:amz:wpaper:2023-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: INET Oxford admin team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inoxfuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.