Mines, plantations, and militarisation

Environmental conflicts in Tinsukia, Assam

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4464772
AutoresSanjay Barbora (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, autor correspondente), Sarat Phukan (0000-0001-9190-773X, Gauhati University)
Ano2023
Volume6
Fascículo1
Páginas222-239
Data de publicação2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486221089820
OpenAlexW4226270909
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas14

Two large-scale environmental disasters in Assam's easternmost district Tinsukia, raised great passion and held much traction in local print, electronic and social media platforms in 2020. The National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) granted post-facto approval for opencast mining in Saleki Proposed Reserved Forest (PRF) under Dehing-Patkai Elephant Reserve in Assam. Later, the public sector company, Oil India Limited (OIL) reported a gas leak in Baghjan that resulted in a major blowout resulting in deaths and displacement in the area. In this article, we argue that these events constitute a tragic outcome of decades of appropriation of natural resources by the oil, tea and coal industry all of which depend on obsolete technologies of extraction. We focus on how this is happening in a place that has several disaffected, marginalised people who once relied on agriculture for their livelihoods. We argue that these two events are not aberrations in the global narrative of inter-governmental concerns for climate change. Instead, we believe that they are part of a global template of re-colonisation that continued long after the formal transfers of power that occurred in Africa and Asia in the 20th century

Agriculture · Archaeology · Environmental protection · Geography · Geopolitics · Livelihood · Natural resource · Political science · Wildlife · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology