- Residential areas next to a major nickel processing site on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island recorded exponential increases in diagnoses of respiratory infections between 2020 and 2023.
- During that same period, the value of nickel exports from Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of the metal, increased from around $800 million to $6.8 billion.
- Interviews by Mongabay with residents of one village in the area indicate health conditions there have deteriorated rapidly.
LELILEF SAWAI, Indonesia — Hernemus Takuling’s life in this coastal village has changed ever since construction began on the Weda Bay Industrial Park, which borders Lelilef Sawai, home to around 5,000 people, on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island.
“Everything’s filthy,” Hernemus told Mongabay Indonesia. “You need to wear a mask just to go out onto the road.”
Staff at the clinic in Lelilef Sawai, which sits on the bayfront in Central Halmahera district, see daily the consequences of this deterioration of the local environment. Every day wheezing patients file into the clinic’s waiting room.
Anecdotal testimony from local people affirming new health risks appears borne out by striking changes in health care data, which show the number of people here diagnosed with respiratory infections jumped from 434 cases in 2020 to 10,579 cases in 2023.
Villagers like Hernemus are resorting to seemingly desperate measures to recapture a time not long ago when the community enjoyed a healthy environment, a universal right established under Indonesia’s 1945 Constitution.
“Every day, we have to spray the front of the house with water,” Hernemus said.
Weda in the Water
Weda Bay Industrial Park, better known by its Indonesian acroynm IWIP, is a joint venture established in 2018 and now operated by the Chinese mining conglomerates Huayou, Tsingshan and Zhenshi.
The site is fueled by 3,400 megawatts of purpose-built coal-fired power plants, driving a cluster of smelters processing up to 30,000 metric tons of ferronickel ore per year.
“The whole chain of the IWIP operation requires an extraordinary amount of electricity,” Julfikar Sangaji, an activist with the Mining Advocacy Network, a civil society group known as Jatam, said in a recent report.
The scale of the work done in the industrial park has consumed much of the landscape around Lelilef Sawai village.
North Weda’s coastline from the Lelilef Sawai boarding houses at the west edge of the village to the eastern diaspora church, which is painted electric purple, is a 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) scar of brown surrounded by forest green.
“Everything is damaged, from the forest to the beach,” Hernemus said. “It’s one illness after another.”
Last year, Mongabay reported on the arrest by police in Jakarta of two environmental advocates, Cristina Rumalatu and Thomas Madilis, on criminal defamation charges following a demonstration against environmental pollution around the industrial park.
Opposition to further development of the industrial estate has reached nearby villages, like Sagea, located 10 km (6 mi) east of the industrial estate. Sagea resident Supriyadi Sudirman said expansion of coal plants should be stopped because of the rise in respiratory infections and other health problems documented in his village.
“If it carries on like this, then this excessively destructive investment is just going to kill those of us who live day to day in this village,” Supriyadi told Mongabay Indonesia.
Soot case
Research by Climate Rights International and the Berkeley AI Climate Initiative found that at least 5,331 hectares (13,173 acres) of tropical forest on Halmahera had been cleared for nickel mining.
That forest clearance accounted for the emission of around 2 million metric tons of greenhouse gases previously stored within the soil and biomass of the forest, the report says.
Muammar Fabanyo, a spokesperson for the industrial park, told Mongabay Indonesia that the project had complied with prevailing regulations governing the sector, which is responsible for generating billions of dollars of revenue every year.
“All operational activities are carried out responsibly,” Muammar said in a written response.
The park’s fleet of coal power stations had all received approval from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, he added.
In Sagea village, however, Surpriyadi said the industrial park has brought only misery.
“It’s destroyed our food sources and our environment,” he said.
The disease burden recorded by the village clinic has increased 24-fold in just four years, according to data from the clinic.
During that period, nickel production in Indonesia, now the world’s largest producer of the commodity, accelerated from $800 million to $6.8 billion in value terms.
But while investors profit and growth figures soar, the tradeoffs are shouldered by those on the frontlines, whether families in Lelilef Sawai exposed to heavy metal toxicity or the workers mining and refining the mineral.
Jatam, the NGO, says 26 workers have been killed at IWIP since 2018.
Many communities in mining areas around the world have seen a rise in purchasing power from the economic growth driven by the extractive sector. However, a 2019 review of approximately 800 mines in 44 low- and middle-income countries found a worrying decline in health indicators, including a 10% increase in anemia in women and a 5% average rise in child stunting, two conditions with links to exposure to heavy metals.
There’s growing apprehension here that pollution levels are set to rise further, compounding the risk of invasive health consequences in the village.
Three further coal plants will increase the coal capacity here by a third to 4,540 megawatts, adding significantly to the pollution spilling out of smokestacks over communities like Lelilef Sawai.
Hernemus spends part of his day rinsing a layer of dirt from outside his house. The next day he will be out there again, washing the dust and soot from his family home.
“The dust comes in on the table,” Hernemus said. “Every day we feel sick from inhaling various kinds of dust.”
Banner image: A coal-fired power plant at night in the nickel industrial area in Halmahera. Image by Rabul Sawal/Mongabay Indonesia.
This story was first published here in Indonesian on Dec. 12, 2024.
Photos: The lives and forests bound to Indonesia’s nickel dreams
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This story first appeared on Mongabay
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