Skin in the Coal Game - The Story of Mahan

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another”
- MK Gandhi

In July 2012 when I was travelling through different parts of the country to find out the true cost of electricity I met Chote Singh, a forest dweller and a Gondh tribe member from Budher Village in Mahan, Singrauli district. He was going in the forest to collect firewood and I decided to walk with him. On our way inside the forest, I saw a bonfire which was almost dying and I asked him what’s with this bonfire here.

He said, “It’s a funeral pyre. An old lady had died in the neighbouring village and was cremated in the forest last night.”

I shot another question. “Dont you have a crematorium here?”

He said, “Sahab, the forest is our home. It takes care of all our needs from cradle to cremation.”

That statement will always stay with me, but Chote Singh, along with 15,000 other families whose livelihood depends on this forest, are facing the threat of losing their home and livelihood forever due to coal mining.

Skin is the largest organ in a human body and if you suffer burns of 70%-80%, even if all the other organs inside the body are working fine, you won’t be able to survive. Forests are the skin of our planet and mankind is busy ripping it apart at the size of a football field every two seconds.

Here are some facts for you: 15% of Amazon and 72% of Indonesia’s intact forests have been lost forever. Orangutan habitat in Indonesia and neighbouring regions has been slashed by 55% and Bornean orangutans have halved in population in the last half century.

India is busy destroying forests at the rate of 333 acres daily. In fact, according to a report released by FSI (Forest Survey of India) on February 7, 2012, India had lost 367 sq km in just two years. To put it in perspective it is twice the size of Kolkata. Another 1.1 million hectares of forests in central and eastern India, home to 35% of the 1,700 tigers left in the wild, may be destroyed forever due to 13 proposed coal fields alone.

Around the world, lush tropical forests are being logged for timber and pulp, cleared to grow food, for mining, building urban habitats and destroyed by the impacts of climate change. Eighty percent of the forest that covered almost half of the earth's land surface 8,000 years ago have already been irreplaceably degraded or destroyed.

I don’t think we need to go back to school to learn that cutting down forests and burning the coal that lies underneath will release large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This will heat up the atmosphere and threaten all life on earth as the climate changes unpredictably. What we need to do is unlearn what development actually means. What is the point of development if it comes at the cost of destroying our forests forever?

I cannot imagine living in a world where humans are the only species left and definitely not with the guilt of not trying to protect the forests when we have the opportunity to.

So let’s make our voices heard loud and clear. And let everyone know that we are here to save our forests. We are here to save Mahan. Sign up on www.junglistan.org

Brikesh singh works as a Mobilisation Manager with Greenpeace India. You can follow him on Twitter @brikesh