How India’s abrupt coal mine closure can take a leaf from Germany’s just transition

Women have borne the brunt of India’s and Germany’s coal mine closures, but women-led initiatives in energy transition in Germany’s Lusatia offer a blueprint for fostering gender equity in India’s transition process

by Flavia Lopes and Shuchita Jha

Sunita Korku ,18 years old, plays with her five-year-old in the front yard of her house. Married at age 12 to alleviate her father’s financial problems, she struggles to feed her child since her husband lost his job in the coal mine. 

In the coal mining region of Anuppur, India, where Sunita stays, a significant economic and social upheaval is underway due to the country’s energy transition. The closure of more than 10 coal mines in the region over the past decade has left around 5,000 predominantly male workers unemployed. With the primary earners suddenly without work, it is the women, particularly young girls like Sunita, who suffer the most. Many have lost their informal jobs, forced to forgo further education and bear direct and indirect burdens, as their families grapple with financial strain. 

Meanwhile thousands of miles away, in Germany, a different story is unfolding. Franziska Stoelzel, a native of Weiswasser, Lusatia that houses coal mines, has been actively engaged in promoting social change and structural transition within her region. 

Stoelzel’s personal history is deeply intertwined with the coal legacy of Lusatia. Her grandmother had toiled in the coal factories of Weisswasser, balancing her work responsibilities with the care of her children and the management of household tasks, bearing a disproportionate burden, while her coal-miner grandfather socialised with his friends after his shifts. Growing up, she witnessed firsthand the disproportionate impact on the women in her community. 

Now, as the coal industry wanes and Lusatia faces a new era of transition, Stoelzel sees it as an opportunity to improve the lives of women. 

Germany and India are on distinct paths in their coal phaseout and transition to renewable energy. Germany has committed to eliminating coal entirely by 2038, whereas India targets achieving 500 gigawatt from non-fossil sources by 2030, marking a pivotal shift toward cleaner and more sustainable energy. Despite their differing timelines, both countries have been encountering challenges in transitioning their energy sectors, including job displacement in the coal industry and the imperative of an inclusive and gender-equitable transition.

Both countries have a history of collaboration on just transition initiatives. Germany’s experiences and lessons in fostering a just and inclusive energy transition can serve as valuable guidance for India and other nations facing similar challenges. By leveraging Germany’s expertise, India can navigate its own transition more effectively, ensuring that no one is left behind in the shift towards a greener future. 

Coal mine closures in India

The coal industry is among the biggest employers in India with an estimated 2.6 million people employed. Men’s workforce composition in the coal economy is 98.4% in India, while women’s participation is 1.6%. The government of India identified that over 299 mines have been abandoned, discontinued, or closed. The 144 coal mines that have been shut or abandoned have rendered over 300,000 people unemployed, and in search of work in Jharkhand, uprooting the lives of several women from the affected families. The scale of the challenge can be gauged by the number of people left without a regular source of income in just one state.  

As per the National Family Health Survey – 5,  32.2% in Jharkhand and 41.6% in West Bengal were married off before they could attain the legal age for marriage -(18 years). Crimes against women in these coal-mining districts have been on the rise since the time women land-owners lost their property to coal mines, becoming landless and jobless in the process, shows a paper by Dr. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutta, Professor of Resource, Environment and Development at the Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University. Lahiri-Dutt has worked extensively on coal mine closures and gender justice in West Bengal and Jharkhand. 

“What is seen in these mines is a classic example of feminization of poverty, when development brings about gender-specific poverty. A decaying agricultural base, depleting resources and near absence of opportunities in this mono-industrial region have completely alienated poor Adivasi and lower-caste women from the mining sector,” says Lahiri-Dutta in her study. 

As India grapples with gender injustice, it is trying to formulate a people-centric coal-mine closure framework with the help and support of the World Bank, but not much progress has been made in the matter yet. A report by the World Bank shows that when unemployment increases among men, women experience higher levels of domestic violence, food insecurity, and a decline in customary status.

“The reasons why women bear a greater share of the impacts of coal mine and thermal power plant closures are rooted in gender roles and relations in coal mining communities. Because the industry has traditionally employed only a handful of women directly, they are unable to access employment and/or development programmes that might be extended to male workers who lose their jobs. Because women’s roles in the care economy are invisible and unpaid, there is a risk that historic gender imbalances will be perpetuated, preventing opportunities in the new clean-energy economy to reach women,” it states. 

Germany’s coal phase-out by 2038

In 2018, responding to the need to transition away from coal while safeguarding worker interests, the German federal government formed the Coal Commission, composed of officials from federal and regional governments, unions, and industry representatives. In 2020, through the Coal Exit Act they committed to transitioning away from coal by 2038. 

While Germany closed down its last hard coal mine in 2018, at present, it is one of the world’s largest producers of lignite, or brown coal in the world. Lignite is mined in three regions: Lusatia, Central Germany mining district and in Rhenish mining district in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and it accounts for 22% of Germany’s primary energy consumption. According to DEBRIV, the German Lignite Industry Association, the lignite industry employs as many as 17,216 in direct jobs, while this figure may vary for indirect and coal-associated jobs along the value chain. 

To facilitate this structural transition, the federal government brought in a series of acts, such as the Coal Regions Investment Act, 2020, to financially support the lignite regions. Through this act, the federal government will provide up to 14 billion euros for structural change, including alternative jobs, transportation digitisation, promoting investments as well as development for tourism. At the same time, the federal government will invest a further 26 billion euros for measures that are within its competence, including establishing research institutions, promoting innovative energy transition projects, and funding key infrastructure projects.

The funds are used differently by different districts. For instance, “the investment strategy for structural change funds is more participatory in Brandenburg than in Saxony (district in Lusatia). So it is more of a top-down versus a bottom-up approach in these two districts,” says Victoria Luh,  a research associate at the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS), Potsdam. “Based on the Coal Regions Investment Act, the funds are used to create jobs or for projects that create added economic value. Unfortunately, climate protection goals are given secondary priority and are not stipulated as a requirement in the Coal Regions Investment Act.”

While there has been a lot of financial investment in the structural transition, shut shutdown of mines is not new for Germany. Post-reunification, the country witnessed a large-scale and sudden closures of coal mines. A lot of people were left out of jobs, notes Kajta Muller, an environmental and energy ethnologist at Merseburg University of Applied Sciences. “Two-thirds of these were women who depended on mining and secondary industry,” she adds. 

“If you look at it relationally, we have been undergoing change since the political turnaround in 1989. Due to the political decision to phase out coal, our region is now once again affected by accelerated change. The economy is being developed from a fossil base to the areas of mobility, health and renewable energies, and all in a short space of time. Of course, we are also experiencing this privately,” says Romy Hoppe, a native of Lusatia, who founded her own organisation to support women during the structural transition. 

However, compared to the situation in the 1990s, the current transition is way more planned and coordinated, added Muller based on her interactions with people from Lusatia which she undertook for her study. 

This is evident in both top-down measures undertaken by federal and regional governments but also bottom-up measures, where civil society and local municipalities along with women-led organisations are playing a major role in shaping the transition. 

The examples from Germany “have demonstrated that ensuring justice in coal transition can be achieved through robust stakeholder engagements and looking at just transition from a regional perspective,” says Dr. Pradip Swarnakar, Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India and founder of the Just Transition Research Centre at the institute. “It also involves utilising and expanding scope of existing resources and infrastructure with legal and institutional reforms being implemented with support of strategic and integrated sustainable development plans.”

Ensuring justice in coal transition can be achieved through robust stakeholder engagements and looking at just transition from a regional perspective.

Dr. Pradip Swarnakar

Women charting their own course in Germany’s Lusatia

In 2016, Gabler and several other women co-founded an initiative in Görlitz  in Lusatia, aiming to create a supportive community for working women in the region. The initiative, FWieKraft- Frauen, Leben, Lausitz (Women, Life, Lusatia) provided a platform for women to continue their professional pursuits while addressing the unique challenges of living in the region. In the first year of its opening, the women used the location to write their academic qualification papers and to continue their freelance work through language courses, translation work and project development. Over the years, FWieKraft, played a major role in advocating for women’s perspectives in Lusatia’s structural transition. 

The main motivation behind FWieKraft, as Gabler puts it, is that “the region struggles with gender asymmetry.” “There are significantly fewer younger and middle-aged women than men in communities. On top of it, women are significantly underrepresented in important sectors that have above-average pay (mining, energy) as well as across the management levels of industry, commerce, administration and in the public education sector. And they are overrepresented in below-average paid industries as well as in jobs below the management level.”

FwieKraft also spearheaded an alliance of Equal Opportunity officers in municipalities across Lusatia. These officers collaborated to advocate for gender justice during the transition away from coal mining, emphasising the importance of considering factors like decentralisation, mobility, and cultural aspects in the discussions around the coal phase-out and regional development. In October last year, the alliance travelled to the European Commission headquarters in Brussels to discuss social cohesion and economic development from a gender perspective. 

Gabler notes that these officers brought along regional experiences to add to the transition policies. “Where do you recognise that things run well and where do you recognise that things run the wrong path?” She elaborates. The idea was, as Gabler emphasises, on the need to slow down and consider quality transition, such as ensuring equal opportunities for women to participate.

In another part of Lusatia, Romy Hoppe, co-founded the Lausitz Frauen Network or the Lusatian Women Network. “The goal for my network is to achieve professional equality for women in our society,” says Hoppe. “To achieve this, we address issues, network women and promote the transfer of knowledge. We want to create publicity for professional equality and the needs in the world of work, as well as transporting these issues to institutions and social actors.” 

Transition Opportunities

Marko Schmidt works as a community organiser at Revierwende or District Transition, a project initiated by the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) that seeks to protect the interest of employees from the coal industry. 

“While there is an ecological impact of this phase-out, there is also a demographic impact in Lusatia. We have an older society, so a lot of people can retire early with a pension. Also, there is an opportunity for younger people to get new qualifications in the renewable sector,” says Schmidt. “The coal company, LEAG, is also getting into renewable energy and they have built windmills, solar energy, battery production etc in the region.”

“A lot of women have been part of technical and non-technical jobs in the coal-associated industry,” Schmidt says. “We have been working with LEAG to offer choices to employees, including early retirement, or transition to jobs within renewable energy.” 

Schmidt also notes that they are expecting over 20,000 new jobs in the region, in areas such as administration, hospitality, transport, medical and nursing and industry. “This also means the region needs to be open-minded about migration.”

Several civil society groups have been working at different levels to facilitate women’s inclusion in transition. 

Stoelzel, who started working with the United Nations University, Flores, has been conducting workshops and forums for locals including women, on the “discourse of sustainability in the region” and the role of various actors and stakeholders in the structural transition. “These discourses also take stock of local needs,” she adds. 

The discussions brought in important perspectives, she notes. “Central concerns have been to recruit more skilled workers and to create suitable jobs for the women workers. In addition, it is necessary to redesign agriculture.” Stoelzel’s aim is to imbibe feminist perspectives in the discussions. Saskia Borsius, another native of the region, has been working with municipalities to develop proposals and concept notes on inclusive just transition. 

“It is not enough to demand that gender perspectives be taken into account; what is needed is the political will and existing structures to actually walk, or to let women walk more strongly,” says Gabler. “The  structural change in Lusatia is also about the political self-organisation process for women.”

Swarnakar adds that the successful initiatives from Germany provide important lessons in early planning, timely governance and implementation of structural reforms re-emphasising the central role of government to ensure social security and welfare benefits, that can be useful in the Indian context. 

“Labour and social policies can become important support tools for the development and encouragement of new industries. Increasing their scope can leverage smooth economic diversification and development of alternative livelihood options for the regional communities and workforce. A well-established educational infrastructure can play a pivotal role in imparting new education and additional training to assist new generations in opting for different jobs. Moreover, cultural identities need to be strengthened to allow people to navigate the region differently,” he adds, earmarking the takeaways that can be useful for India from Germany’s transition.

The story was done as part of the CLEW cross-border reporting grant. 

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