Enhancing Sustainability: Reclamation and Rehabilitation Strategies for Restoring Mined-Out Lands in India to Mitigate Climate Change Impacts

Mineral resources are wealth repositories for every nation to streamline its socio-economic development. Exploration and exploitation of mineral resources deteriorate the environment at diverse levels. Although mining significantly contributes to a nation’s economic prosperity, it adversely affects the biophysical and social environment. Therefore, maintaining harmony and balance between extraction and conservation becomes imperative to every participating nation in the interest of sustainable development. This chapter explores the impact of mining on land, water, biological and social environment, prudent considerations that are essential for ecosystem design, proven scientific steps of topographic reconstruction, and ways to devise a holistic and integrated reclamation plan of opencast iron ore mined out lands with its successful case studies that are amenable for site-specific replication in India. The chapter aims to give the readers a glimpse of scientifically laid Reclamation and Rehabilitation (R&R) plans developed by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) towards stabilization and restoration of degraded environment based on site-specific ecological drivers, engineering measures, and biological ways to render unhindered delivery of ecosystem services for both humanity and nature, along with challenges and prospects.