ICS Seminar Series

This paper examines the contradictions of coal based developmentalism through an analysis of local communities in Central India and Southeast Australia at the centre of contestation over major new mining developments. Coal mining and consumption are increasingly contested issues in India. In recent years, adivasis in Chhattisgarh state have been resisting the encroachment of their lands and communal forests by Adani and other coal mining corporations. In New South Wales, farmers and Gomeroi Traditional Owners have led a decade-long campaign against the mining project of Shenhua, a state-owned Chinese company. We compare the vicissitudes of resistance, resilience and alliance against the arrival of coal capital and state supported extractivism that threaten land, water, heritage and livelihoods. Our method of ‘following the carbon’ (Mitchell 2009:422) in these locations, North and South, shows contrasts and connections of collective struggles in the midst of a global coal rush that portends a challenging future.