Kollam, India – Sebastian Stephen has spent his adult life chasing ocean winds and catching fish off the coast of Kollam, in India’s southern state of Kerala.
A stroke two years ago left the 72-year-old fisherman partially paralysed, forcing him to hire others to operate his motorised fishing boat. In recent years, the catch has dwindled for fisherfolk along India’s southwestern coast due to rising sea surface temperatures and increasing extreme weather events, which affect fish food availability and survival rates. This, in turn, has pushed many fishers into debt.
Now, things could even worsen, Kerala’s fishing communities fear.
In November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government announced the first-ever auction of offshore land parcels for mining. “We are pioneering offshore mineral auctions for the first time in 75 years,” said Mining Minister G Kishan Reddy. The 13 identified “blocks” for the first offshore mineral auction include three sites chosen for digging up construction sand off the coast of Kollam.
The Indian government argues that the Geological Survey of India (GSI) has identified about 600,000 square kilometres of offshore territories that could offer lucrative mining opportunities. The blocks selected for the auction fall in these regions.
The three sites off Kerala contain an estimated 302.42 million tonnes of construction sand, enough to build more than 10,000km (6,000 miles) of highway.
But Kerala’s fisherfolk worry the mining will kill the already depleted fishing stocks they rely on for their livelihoods, and damage the coast that has been their home for centuries.
Since the November announcement, they have held near-continuous protests against the offshore mining plan. On February 27, the Kerala Fisheries Coordination Committee, a platform representing fishers and other stakeholders in the fishing industry, held a daylong strike.
The state is governed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its left-leaning allies who are opposed to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government, which rules federally.
On March 4, the Kerala state assembly passed a unanimous resolution opposing the federal government’s decision to permit offshore mining. The BJP has no representation within the state assembly.
On March 12, a march in the nation’s capital, New Delhi, led by the Kerala Fisheries Coordination Committee saw 18 members of parliament speak against the offshore mining proposal.
“Income is low as it is. If this goes ahead, you can imagine the position it leaves us in,” Stephen said. “[Fishing] is our livelihood, and this [mining project] will have dire consequences. The [union government] should back out immediately.”
‘Grave concerns’
On March 29, India’s opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, wrote to Modi criticising the offshore mining plan.
“Tenders were floated without any consultation with the stakeholders or an assessment of the long-term socio-economic impact on coastal communities,” Gandhi wrote. “Millions of fisherfolk have expressed grave concerns [about] its impact on their livelihood and way of life.”
The primary concern of the state’s fishers is the potential damage from offshore mining on a large sand bank spread over 3,300 square kilometres — more than 10 times the land area of the Maldives archipelago to the southwest of Kerala.
This sand bank is a major habitat for shrimp, octopus, squid and fish. According to Charles George, convenor of the Kerala Fisheries Coordination Committee, the Kollam region has 3,500 trawlers, more than 500 motorised boats like Stephen’s, and hundreds of other boats. “The livelihoods of these people depend on the sand bank’s fertile fishing grounds.”
But the local economy isn’t the only worry. Sheer survival is also at stake, according to critics of the mining initiative.
The fishing community in Kollam fears that offshore mining could damage or even destroy the rocky reefs along the coast that prevent shoreline erosion. Those reefs protected the region from some of the most devastating effects of the 2004 tsunami, which killed hundreds of people in other parts of the Kerala coast.
“People were safe because of the fortification provided by these reefs offshore,” George said.
Coastal erosion some 80km south, in Vizhinjam, home to a recently developed port, has spooked Kollam’s fishers, who worry that their shoreline might similarly suffer. The port in Vizhinjam has faced local protests, though a 2022 study found no correlation between the project and the erosion.
“There is a common misconception that the fishing community is blind to these issues,” said N A Jane, secretary of the Kerala Matsya Thozhilali Aikya Vedi (TUCI), a union of independent traditional fishermen.
“[But] we are very aware, we understand what will happen if you take sand from our shores.”
‘Well within active fishing zones’
The federal mining ministry has said that the proposed sites for offshore mining do not fall within the state’s active fishing zones.
However, a report by the marine monitoring lab of the University of Kerala’s Department of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries released in February, contradicts that claim.
The territorial waters of Kerala extend seawards up to 12 nautical miles (about 22km), and the proposed mining sites fall just outside this limit, A Biju Kumar, professor and head of the department, told Al Jazeera.
“But fishers don’t just fish within this boundary. With the advent of cheap Chinese outboard engines, traditional fishers now fish up to 100m depth,” he said. “All the proposed sites are below 65m depth, which shows that the proposed sites are well within active fishing zones.”
The report also highlighted the potential impact on rocky reefs that line the Kollam coast. “We have dived to 50m, very close to the proposed mining sites. The reefs here have been around for thousands of years and are areas where fish accumulate and where traditional fishermen fish even today,” Biju Kumar said. The reefs are also home to three-quarters of the 30 reported coral species along the Kerala coast.
Unlike other marine areas, the Kerala coast has a lot of clay and silt deposition, Biju Kumar said. Sea sand mining in the region will release a lot of clay back into the water, increasing turbidity and reducing light penetration in the water, leading to less productive phytoplankton, the primary producers in marine ecosystems.
Around the world, sand mining, especially shallow water mining, has resulted in extensive coastline erosion, Biju Kumar told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera has contacted India’s Ministry of Mines for its comments on the concerns raised by fisherfolk and scientists but is yet to receive a response.
$1.8bn hunt for critical minerals
The offshore mining initiative is part of a larger $1.8bn seven-year National Critical Mineral Mission announced by the Modi government in January.
Critical minerals are the building blocks of the global green energy transition and are seen as vital to India’s 2070 net-zero emission goals. “But it’s not just the green transition, from pharmaceuticals to consumer durables such as air conditioners, critical minerals are a part of the larger economy,” Ganesh Sivamani, associate fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Social and Economic Progress, said.
Several minerals are critical for India’s clean energy transition and manufacturing self-sufficiency, primarily lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth metals. “We are 100 percent import-dependent on almost all of them. There are some levels of domestic production of rare earths, but not nearly enough to manufacture all the clean energy equipment we need,” Sivamani said.
“What the National Critical Mineral Mission can do is try to open up the mining sector in India,” Sivamani said. “Once we build up the capacity to mine these minerals and have access to an uninterrupted supply, we won’t need to rely on other nations.”
But this will take time, much beyond the projected seven-year timeline, Sivamani told Al Jazeera. “Mining itself is such a slow-moving sector. From exploration to obtaining clearances to setting up processing industries, it will take 15-20 years before we can see the benefits,” he said.
And speed over caution is not a smart strategy, he warned. “The laws they are passing seem to suggest that they are going back” on some of the government’s commitments on environmental protection, he said.
Though construction sand isn’t listed as a critical mineral, it is an increasingly important resource, Sivamani said.
“It is going to be the driving force behind the construction industry in India, which is going to experience a massive boom as urbanisation increases,” he said. “[But], I believe at this point, like other countries in the West and island nations, India, too, should put a moratorium on offshore mining.”
France declared its support for a ban on all deep-sea mining as early as November 2022. Since then, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have all called for a moratorium.
Sea sand mining will be essential in the future, according to Biju Kumar. “If not today, tomorrow we will have to turn to the ocean for sand,” he said. “But the problem is where to mine? The government should identify sites with minimum ecological and social impacts.”
For now, Kerala’s fishing community is braced for a fight. If the Modi government decides to go ahead with the offshore mining plan despite opposition from fishers, the Kerala government and scientists like Biju Kumar, George said, it would be going “against the wishes of an entire state”.
“We will not let it happen.”
