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Paper short abstract:

The ecological and climate crises have exposed mining’s social and environmental injustices. Focusing on North Karanpura, Jharkhand, this paper examines displacement, precarity and resistance in coal regions. It calls for justice frameworks centring on marginalised voices and sustainable futures.

Paper long abstract:

The ongoing ecological and climate crises have brought mining practices and their social consequences into sharp focus. In India’s coal-dependent economy, extractive frontiers serve as both sites of rapid development and enduring injustice. This paper critically examines the intersections of climate justice, ecological degradation, and the lived realities of communities in contested coalfields, with a particular focus on Indigenous lands. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the North Karanpura in Jharkhand, the paper investigates how mine-led displacement, compensation inequalities, and long-term land degradation disproportionately burden marginalized groups.

Through the lens of political ecology and theories of resource politics, the paper explores how resistance movements, gendered labour dynamics, and immobility in the landscapes challenge the dominant narrative of ‘progress’ tied to extraction. It argues that these sites are not only shaped by extraction but also serve as battlegrounds where questions of justice—climate, ecological, and social—are negotiated and contested. By foregrounding the voices of those directly impacted, this paper highlights how coal-dependent regions in the Global South illuminate broader global dilemmas in achieving ecological and climate justice amid systematic inequality.

This contribution offers insights into the limits of current approaches to justice in the context of ecological crisis and argues for alternative frameworks that centre marginalised voices, reparative action, and sustainable futures.

Keywords: Extractive Frontiers, Indigenous groups, Mining and Justice, India