2023-07-08 10:05:14
Valdya Baraputri BBC Indonesia
July 8, 2023
Nickel is an integral part of life and is used in stainless steel, mobile phone and electric car batteries. Demand for the metal is expected to increase significantly as the world shifts to greener vehicles. But environmentalists have warned that mining nickel in Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, could have damaging effects on the environment.
It was a night on the island of Labengki, southeast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. We follow two men with torches and homemade arrows. They dive to catch fish, lobsters and sea cucumbers, and other prey are better harvested at night when the fish are less active.
The men were from the indigenous Bajau community, known for freedivers and hunters. But they worry that their traditional way of life is numbered.
“Right now, the water is still clear,” said Tawing, one of the fishermen. “But it won’t always be like this…the nickel waste gets into the water during the rainy season, and the ocean currents bring it here.”
He warned that if the government did not act, waste from the nickel mine would end up in the sea, harming marine life on and around the island.
Indonesia and Australia have the world’s largest nickel reserves, and the International Energy Agency predicts demand for nickel will grow by at least 65% by 2030 as we shift to electric vehicles, requiring more rechargeable batteries.
Indonesia is expected to meet two-thirds of global copper demand, and the country has signed deals worth billions of dollars with international companies eager to invest in its processing plants and mines.
About 50 nickel mining companies currently operate in the North Konawe Regency, across the water from Labunki Island, according to Indonesian government figures.
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Fisherman Tawing and the aquatic products he caught.
It takes about an hour to get there by boat. As we got closer, the green hills gave way to brown, deforested forests. Excavators and barges can be seen digging and delivering “new gold”. The water beneath our feet is reddish brown.
In the coastal village of Boenaga, we met another Bajo fisherman, Lukman, who said he could no longer fish near his home.
“We can’t see anything when we dive,” he said, pointing to the brown water behind the house. “Could hit a rock.” The cost of fuel prevented him from going further afield to fish, he said, and if they made a fuss about it, the police would eventually get involved.
To mine nickel, large areas of trees were felled and the land was excavated into open pits. Since the roots of the trees are no longer there to stabilize the ground, the soil is more likely to be washed away when it rains.
Government figures show at least 21 floods and mudslides in southeast Sulawesi in 2022. Between 2005 and 2008, before mining expanded, there were only two to three cases a year, according to Japan’s National Disaster Countermeasures Agency.
Chemicals such as sodium cyanide and diesel are also used in mining. That worries local environmentalist Habib Nadjar Buduha. If the waste and water are not managed properly, the sediment can end up in the sea, he said.
He showed me a video he shot about 10 miles off the coast of Bahubulu, showing a coral reef “choked” by sediment.
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Lukman, a Bajo fisherman.
Worried that the same thing would happen to Labunki, he founded a giant clam conservation group in 2009. “They’ll never beat nickel pollution,” he said.
“Sediment buries and destroys them.”
Individual nickel mining companies near Bonaga did not respond to our request for comment, but we spoke to the Indonesian Nickel Miners Association – which roughly half of North Konawi mining companies are members of.
Secretary-General Meidy Katrin said that in order to obtain a permit, companies must agree to reforest or reclaim land after mining ends.
“The question is, are these companies doing this?” she said, acknowledging that there are some bare lands that have not been reforested. But she said it might not be the fault of the licensed companies: “There is also a lot of illegal mining in this area.”
She believes the government has a duty to check on miners to make sure they are complying and that what they write in their reports matches reality.
image copyrightHabib Nadjar Buduha
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Conservationists warn that sediment can coat the reef, suffocating it.
Jufri Asri, the mayor of Bonaga village, sees things differently than Luqman and Habib. He believes the mines bring benefits to the community. “Take the price of fish as an example,” he said. “I don’t bring fish into the city to sell because the prices are higher here. These companies need fish too.”
His 21-year-old son works for a nearby nickel mining company, and like other Bonaga families, they receive at least $70 a month in compensation from mining.
Fiscal agreements are common and are designed to offset mining activity and the inconvenience of heavy vehicles passing residences on their way to and from mine pits. Giuffre pointed out that if nickel production increases, their compensation will also increase.
In the capital, Jakarta, we meet Novita Indri, an activist for Trend Asia, an NGO promoting sustainable development. She accused the authorities of being “too weak” – and would like to see higher environmental standards and stricter regulation.
“We don’t have a track record of sustainable mining,” Indri said. “Indonesia still has a lot of work to do, including strengthening law enforcement, raising emissions standards and enforcing environmental regulations.”
When we posed this question to Professor Irwandy Arif, a consultant to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM), he told us that the government is concerned with “the impact of mining activities on coastal sediments”, not just this region, but throughout Indonesia.
However, he believes the pollution is caused by illegal nickel mines, not licensed companies.
He insisted that the regulations meant that legal operators had water management systems in place to ensure that no hazardous substances flowed into the sea, and he did not believe operators would ignore the rules and risk losing their licences.
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Even with compliance, mining can have a noticeable impact on the landscape.
But Professor Arif admits that in illegal mines without a treatment system, “the soil will only erode”.
He told CNN that anyone not complying with the rules has been banned from selling nickel and that two illegal miners have been brought to court in North Kenaway County — the area where Bonaga is located.
But Professor Arif acknowledged that regulation needs to improve. “Illegal mining is ubiquitous in Indonesia,” he said.
“So far we haven’t regulated it properly … we need to determine what’s legal and what’s illegal so we can minimize damage to the environment,” he said.
He noted that in order to improve the situation, the government had recently established a national task force on illegal mining.
But many of the Baggios we spoke to said change was not happening fast enough. Habib, a conservationist, warned that if things continued like this, the damage could be irreversible.
“They are destroying our future,” he said.
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