In Bundelkhand, it’s a battle to save forests against a diamond mining project

The Bunder diamond mine project, at a site billed as one of Asia’s richest diamond reserves, is facing stiff resistance from local residents and environmentalists nationwide as its execution entails the felling over two lakh trees in the thick Buxwaha forests in Chhatarpur district of the water-scarce Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, about 225 kilometres north-east of Bhopal.

In 2019, Essel Mining & Industries Limited (EMIL), an Aditya Birla Group company, won the bid for the project that was tendered by the then Kamal Nath government. The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government has retained the project, though it is yet to get environment clearance from the central environment ministry. Local Congress and BJP leaders have also joined hands with the protesters.

Sunil Agarwal, a top state forest department official, said that the mining proposal had been sent to the central government but is yet to be cleared.

The EMIL plans to develop a fully mechanised opencast mine and state-of-the-art processing plant for recovery of diamonds with an investment of Rs 2,500 crore and wants to begin mining by the end of the financial year.

It is estimated that the Bunder diamond block has about 34 million carats of rough diamonds, 15 times more than the world-famous diamond mines in neighbouring Panna district, which are estimated to have 22 lakh carats of rough diamonds. The National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) has a diamond mine about 175 km from Bunder.

While the state government has identified 62.64 hectares of land for mining for 50 years, the company is demanding 383 hectares, where it would dump the debris from mining. The project will be spread across 364 hectares of the Buxwaha forests, more than a tenth of the 3,000-ha protected area.

Local residents had mounted a massive resistance even before EMIL began initial prospecting. Besides, over 1.25 lakh people from across the country signed up to fight to save the 2.15 lakh trees that would be cut for the mine project. But the pandemic situation has ensured that the protest against the project is now largely confined to social media.

“As soon as the corona infection is controlled, volunteers of the ‘Save Buxwaha’ campaign will reach the project site,” said Dharmendra Kumar, a leading activist in the campaign, suggesting something like the Chipko movement is on the cards. On May 9, over 50 institutions across the country got together through a webinar and chalked out a strategy to save the trees.

A month earlier on April 9, Neha Singh, a Delhi-based activist, filed a PIL in the Supreme Court seeking stay on the project on the grounds that it will cause incalculable damage to Bundelkhand’s rich biodiversity, apart from snatching the livelihoods of thousands of poor tribals who subsist on minor forest produce. The PIL pointed out that the project site is already a water-stressed region.

According to the pre-feasibility report of the project, its water requirement is about 5.9 million cubic meters per day. “To meet this requirement, a seasonal nallah will be diverted by constructing a dam. The water storage in the reservoir is estimated at around 17 MCM (million cubic metre),” the report said.

Admitting the petition on June 2, the apex court fixed July 1 to hear the matter.

Karuna Raghuvanshi of Bhopal, who is associated with the Rashtriya Jungle Bachao Abhiyan, said that people from many states will intensify the ‘Save Buxwaha’ campaign as soon as the pandemic subsides.

“The Forest clearance report shows that the project would cost over 200,000 trees and also use a lot of water. We are against the environmental destruction in our area, which is already water-distressed,” said Sankalp Jain, a local youth.

Before EMIL was given the project, the then Shivraj Singh Chouhan government had in 2006 granted a prospecting licence to an Indian subsidiary of Rio Tinto, the Australian mining giant. But the project faced strong opposition over ecological concerns. Rio Tinto exited the project after submitting a prospecting report to the state government in 2017.

Although Rio Tinto did not specify a clear reason for the exit, a team of researchers analysed the reasons in a study that was published in May 2021.

“Rio might have left because the diamond business was declining around the world and is predicted to fall further as more diamonds are mined in African countries and in Russia. To them, the money invested so far is simply not worth the trouble bad press would bring,” said Kuntala Lahiri Dutt, one of the authors of the study and Professor in the Resource, Environment and Development (RE&D) programme at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.

In India, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are the three states that produce diamonds. Among them, Madhya Pradesh accounts for about 90% of the total diamond resource of the country.

The production of diamonds in India was at 38,437 carats in 2018-19. The total world production of diamond was 149.8 million carats in 2018,” said a report by the Indian Bureau of Mines. The State-run NMDC has been trying to expand its operations to increase production.

Aniket Dikshit, a resident of Kasera, one of the closest villages to the mining site, said: “We are dependent on minor forest produce and water for farming. The project involves the diversion of a nullah which is a lifeline for the area.”

The tree species found in the area are khair, bel, dhawa, seja, ghont, reunjha, amaltas and sagon.

The area also has a fairly good variety of fauna, including seven species listed in Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. These are the Indian gazelle, chowsingha, sloth bear, leopard, monitor lizard, Indian white-rumped vulture and peacock.

The Ken-Betwa river interlinking project in the Bundelkhand region already threatens 23 lakh trees, and another 1.9 lakh trees have already been cut down for the Bundelkhand Expressway.