The landscape of the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya is rapidly changing. What was once a predominately agricultural economy has shifted to coal mining with significant consequences for people and the environment. “Once you extract coal from the land, it’s really hard to go back to an agricultural economy,” says ECSP’s Sean Peoples in an interview with Wilson Center NOW, about the Global Choke Point film, Broken Landscape.

Co-produced by Peoples and Michael T. Miller in partnership with the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum, Asia Program, and the journalism organization Circle of Blue, the film explores the effects of a ban on Meghalaya’s burgeoning coal industry in response to pollution and safety problems.

Meghalaya has seen an explosion of “rat-hole mines,” created by a technique where miners manually dig vertical holes into the earth before hitting coal veins and cutting horizontally. While this method reduces production costs, it’s very dangerous for workers. Once the coal is hauled up to ground level, it’s often left out in the open, polluting water as it filters through storage areas.

The National Green Tribunal, a relatively new Indian judicial body, implemented a state-wide ban on rat-hole mining in April 2014. This came as a surprise for Miller and Peoples, who didn’t learn about the new legislation until just two days before arriving in Meghalaya. “It completely changed our story,” said Peoples. “We wanted to focus on the miners themselves [but] we weren’t even really able to spend much time in the mines because of the ban.”

Peoples said he and Miller adapted to highlight the contentious debate surrounding the ban instead. The film includes testimonies from both villagers faced with an acid-polluted river downstream and miners, many of them Nepali migrant workers, who are now unemployed and fighting the ban. The mining is “actually infusing a lot of new jobs,” Peoples said, “but how long are they going to be there? And what’s next?”

The National Green Tribunal agreed to enter into negotiations with mining companies, but industry leaders have been unwilling to talk. Nishant, a Nepalese miner, articulates perhaps the most rational middle ground between the two camps. “I do believe that mining affects the environment, particularly the water,” he says. “But this could be regulated and we should not stop work because of it.”

“Having those different perspectives is really important for us to capture,” Peoples said. Yet it’s just a sliver of a much bigger picture. “We just touched on the issues…There’s so much more story to get.”

In many countries, the quest for more energy is running up against water scarcity. The Global Choke Point series, conducted by the China Environment Forum and Circle of Blue, has investigated this nexus in China, the United States, and India. It’s a testament to how universal the challenge is that it resonates with audiences across the United States during screenings, said Peoples. “These are issues that are still clearly connected to communities that have lived through this, and it’s not necessarily going away if we don’t really tackle the hard questions.”

Read more about Broken Landscape: Confronting India’s Water-Energy Choke Point here.