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

Sugandha Srivastav and Tanmay Singh

INET Oxford Working Papers from Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

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 unlike the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR) provides minimal social and environmental safeguards. The lack of due diligence processes in the CBAA confers an undue comparative advantage to coal development, a facet of policy that is at odds with India's current stance to phasedown coal use, reduce air pollution, and advance modern, low-carbon energy to achieve net-zero emissions. In the decades since the CBAA was written, the local context has significantly changed: the environmental and social costs of dirty energy are clearer, and low-carbon alternatives 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.

Keywords: coal; land acquisition; net-zero; environmental protection; social impact assessment; rehabilitation and resettlement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2022-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/Srivastav-and-Sing ... 6-10-104220_wcqx.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:amz:wpaper:2022-09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in INET Oxford Working Papers from Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by INET Oxford admin team ().