Mining has two broad side-effects which may be considered degrading to the environment. The first is the environmental effects of the change on the land-use from forest or cropland to degraded wasteland due to the improper dumping of overburden; and the second, which is partially linked to the first, is the displacement of whole villages comprised of families who have husbanded their crops and animals, and lived symbiotically with the forest for centuries if not millenia. This paper is concerned mainly with the first and only partially with the second as this is the subject of a separate paper.
This paper outlines methods of estimation of the quantum of degradation caused by mining taking a long-term perspective of the last 50 (to 100) years and the next 50 years. The types of mines listed include a very wide variety including coal mines, bauxite mines, iron-ore mines, manganese, zinc, chromite, asbestos, granite, sandstone, copper, silver, gold and one uranium mine. Oil drilling maybe considered another form of mining or extracting fossil fuels. All these forms of extracting metals, non-metals, rocks, carbons, and hydro-carbons are included under the broad purview of'mining’.
Secondary data will need to be obtained from various governmental departments on the numbers of mines which have been opened both before Independence and after in order to establish parameters. In addition data on families displaced, land acquired, land-use before and after will also be obtained.
After making meaningful categories primary data on a parsimonious sample of each category and each type of mining (extraction) will be carried out to use as estimators of the parameters. The case study of the Piparar coal mine illustrates the difficulties and the inaccuracies that may be encountered when using average estimators. Notwithstanding these difficulties, on account of the fact that mining has been the cause for a great deal of the environmental degradation in India, it is important that fresh estimates should be made.