Politics and Resistance of Coal in Australia and India

“Impeccably researched, Ruchira Talukdar’s book is a timely contribution to the ongoing debates on coal in two most coal dependent countries of the world: India and Australia. This book is far greater than the poisoning curse of coal; it offers a passionate and devastating critique of dirty coal, and an enriching analysis of the resistances and different approaches to decarbonisation in these two countries. A fine book, immensely significant in shaping how the world will think about just transition.” Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, Professor in Resource, Environment and Development, The Australian National University “One of the provocative aspects of this book is the ultimate moral argument that combines human rights and land justice. This argument is quite significant. Human rights alone can fail to link with anti-colonial, resurgence, abolition, and other land-based social justice movements. Ruchira Talukdar makes a brilliant connection between human rights and land rights, and offers a solution to what are problematic rhetoric, policies, and proposals that privilege human rights against the deeper aspirations of many communities and populations suffering from injustice, and facing risks from climate change and climate change drivers. There are very few studies comparing northern and southern environmentalisms, placing historic and contemporary environmentalism in both contexts in cross-communication.” Kyle Whyte, George Willis Pack Professor and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, University of Michigan “In this meticulous and in-depth investigation of anti-coal politics in Australia and India, Ruchira Talukdar shows us the power of subsistence communities in India and Indigenous peoples in Australia in slowing the pace of coal mine expansion and driving the shift towards renewable energy. While often on the frontline of coal extractivism – tied to human rights abuses, destruction of Country and exposure to environmental pollutants – subsistence and Indigenous communities are also the front line of its resistance. At times this resistance lines up alongside the environment movement; and other times it does not. This book comprehensively draws out the continuities and discontinuities between these rights-based campaigns and the broader environment movement. In so doing, it exposes how national and global environment movements sometimes sideline and/or silence a rights-based agenda as they seek to meet their own goals. By giving voice to the environmentalism of the poor in India and Indigenous rights in Australia, this book demonstrates why centring rights, including Indigenous rights, will be vital to achieve social justice and environmental responsibility in a decarbonised world. Everyone aspiring for a climate just future should read this book. And those of us in the environment movement should definitely down tools long enough to read this book and let its message soak in; then pick our tools back up just a little more carefully.” Kristen Lyons, Professor in Environment and Development Sociology, University of Queensland