LIGNITE LANDSCAPES

In the context of two projects I have recently done multiple field trips to lignite/browncoal landscapes in North-Rhine-Westfalia Germany. Until 2030 Germany has to shut down all these opencast mines (“der Braunkohleausstieg”) and find new ways of living with these landscapes. 

What strikes me is the often invisible implications that the mining activities have on the groundwater and how long it will take to restore the disturbance caused by continuous pumping since the beginning of the mines in the 1970’s. The current ‘solution’ is to fill the excavation pits of the mines with Rhine water - another heavily extractivist and top-down approach that has to be sustained until the end of this century. 

To me personally, this approach seems outdated, unsustainable and not creating a resilient landscape for the future. I think it would be time to adres the internal colonialism of the lignite mines and heal the scars of extraction-driven displacement, environmental harm, economic dependency, and political marginalization with regenerative strategies.

This subject in itself has not yet turned into a project for me, yet I want to share a few observations and some ambiguous questions that arose. The slideshow below is an excerpt of the research document ‘Border Journal’ created in the context of the Future Stories project.