- Many lives are intertwined with nickel mining on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island: Indigenous peoples, mining employees, smelter workers, fishers, farmers, and health care workers.
- Indonesia, the world’s largest supplier of nickel, is on a quest for an industrial economic boom linked to the mineral, which is in high demand to make electric vehicle batteries.
- Indigenous people on Halmahera say they worry for their forests and survival of isolated tribal members, while workers at a sprawling industrial park withstand tough working conditions in a bid to materially improve their lives.
- Nickel mining in the region has led to the deforestation of 5,331 hectares (13,173 acres) of tropical forest that held 2.04 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.
EAST HALMAHERA, Indonesia — The dense forest near the village of Dodaga in the island district of East Halmahera means the world to Sumean Gebe, 42, who lives here with his wife and their two children. In the island’s forest, they hunt animals such as wild boar to eat, and collect damar resin to sell.
“It feels comfortable living here,” he says.
Sumean and his small family are among the contacted people part of the O’Hongana Manyawa Indigenous community (meaning “people of the forest”). The O’Hongana Manyawa are a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe in Indonesia, many of whose members live in voluntary isolation. Their lives have for centuries been deeply intertwined with the tropical forests of Halmahera, and their traditions teach them not to damage it.
However, the harmony of tribe and forest has been disturbed by a wave of nickel mining projects. The prized ore is destined for processing at the expansive Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP), about 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the south.
They’re not alone. Around the world, about 54% of critical mineral mining projects for essential components, like the nickel used in electric vehicle batteries, are located on or near Indigenous and peasant lands.
Indonesia, the world’s largest supplier of nickel, is on a quest for an industrial economic boom linked to the mineral and expectations for increased global demand for EVs to replace internal combustion engine cars. The government has banned exports of crude nickel to force companies to process the metal in-country, creating industrial jobs and adding value to the eventual exports. This is done at sprawling smelter complexes like in IWIP. North Maluku province, which includes the island of Halmahera, attracted $9.8 billion in investment in 2022, and saw its economy grow by more than 23% in the second quarter of 2023.
Nickel, rich in the area north of the industrial park, is often found in shallow deposits and can only be mined when the existing forests have been cut down. Several mining companies operate within a radius of 50-300 km (30-190 mi) from the forests inhabited by Indigenous peoples. Nineteen mining companies, including Weda Bay Nickel, the main operator of IWIP, have concessions that overlap with about 40% of forested land used by isolated O’Hongana Manyawa people, according to a report by Survival International.
Sumean says he worries the companies will advance to the village where his people were relocated by the government in the 1970s to make way for mining.
“If it continues like this, the forests in Halmahera will be destroyed. The trees will be cut down and the animals will be driven out and die because their homes have been completely cleared. Then where will we live?” he says softly.
The workers
At IWIP, the sprawling industrial park, it’s evening and employees are getting ready for the 12-hour night shift. The center of Indonesia’s nickel dreams, the park employs around 47,000 people, many of them working these long shifts every day, with no official time off.
“We receive a warning letter if we are more than five minutes late, and we can even receive a letter of termination for unclear reasons,” one worker tells Mongabay, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their job.
Many young people from poor households in nearby villages across eastern Indonesia seek out work in the smelter factories or Halmahera’s nickel mines, workers say. It’s a chance to change their lives and improve their family’s finances without having to travel far to the big cities. Eastern Indonesia is less industrialized than the western islands of Java and Sumatra, so it’s tough to find jobs outside farming and fishing, which pay less than the average monthly salary of $350-$400 at IWIP.
Off shift, many people sleep in small houses close to the smelter and coal-fired power plants that keep them running. The air in these units is stuffy and dirty, houses are packed close together, and there’s little ventilation inside. This is where workers stay to save money. Off in the distance, the treetops and mountains where Sumean and other O’Hongana Manyawa live rise up from behind a processing plant.
The long working hours and heavy workload can be grueling. This increases the risk of work accidents, says JATAM, a watchdog group that advocates for safer and more sustainable mining. Between 2018 and 2024, there were 42 workplace deaths at IWIP, and in 2022 there were 125 work accidents. One worker says the real number of accidents is higher than officially reported.
Mining as a way to transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy technologies can be a double-edged sword, conservationists say. If done unsustainably, it can lead to irrevocable deforestation, contamination and habitat loss, making it less than green. For people, it can mean loss of land. Research has found that nickel mining throughout the island of Halmahera led to the loss of 5,331 hectares (13,173 acres) of tropical forest that held 2.04 million metric tons of greenhouse gases. At Weda Bay Nickel mine, the world’s largest nickel mine, thousands of hectares of forested land will be mined over a 25-year period starting from 2019.
The 5,000-hectare (nearly 12,400-acre) IWIP complex itself sits on once-forested land.
The villagers
A report from JATAM shows that this large-scale deforestation by mining and the development of IWIP increased the frequency of floods. From August 2020 to June 2024, floods with water levels higher than 1 meter (3 feet) occurred more than 12 times, according to the report. One major flood in July and August 2024 submerged seven villages, completely cut off vehicle access, and forced 1,670 residents to live in evacuation tents.
Ahmad Kruwet, 62, who migrated here from Central Java, was among those affected. The flood in Woe Jarana village was the largest he’d experienced since 2004, he tells Mongabay.
“Many houses were swept away, and yesterday there was another flood. I think this is the effect because the forest in the upstream area has been cut down until it is completely gone,” he says.
On Aug. 13 this year, floods inundated the road around the village of Lelilef Waibulan, located near a smelter owned by IWIP. But affected IWIP and mining workers from the area still went off to work. They had to rent a raft for a $9 round trip to get through the flooded section, even rowing their motorbikes along.
Asjuati, the head of the Lelilef Waibulan village health center, says she’s also seen an increase in health issues that she attributes to air pollution and mishandling of industrial waste. The number of people suffering from upper respiratory tract infections in the village nearly doubled between January and July, she says, with most of the cases children, the elderly and mine workers.
The company responded by helping the health center procure medicines and oxygen cylinders. But Asjuati says this doesn’t solve the underlying problem.
“They should also be able to provide a waste disposal solution that does not harm the community,” she says.
Mining activities around the industrial park have also damaged farmland owned by residents who live not far from IWIP.
Hernemus Takuling, a fisherman, is one of those impacted. He could have been down at the beach fishing, he tells Mongabay on the day we meet, but he’s reluctant to go. About 100 m (330 ft) from where he stands, a pipe from a nearby IWIP smelter can be seen dumping waste into the sea and turning the water around the beach a yellowish brown.
“Usually, I take a boat up to 4 kilometers [2.4 miles] from the end of the beach, because the condition of the fish caught there is much better,” Hernemus says. For a few years now, fishers in Halmahera have blamed nickel mining and smelting for turning coastal waters red and depleting fish stocks with heavy metal pollution.
Forest clearing in mining concessions in the Sagea River Basin have also led to silting of the Sagea River, according to Forest Watch Indonesia. The water, which local villagers say they used to rely on for drinking, has turned a murky reddish yellow more than five times this year alone.
The tribe
Up north, Bawehe Bidos, a contacted member of the O’Hongana Manyawa, says he worries about how the expanding mining frontier will impact the whole tribe.
“If heavy equipment has entered the forest, the animals will definitely choose to stay away,” he says, adding this means less food for the tribe.
Isolated O’Hongana Manyawa people in the forests are already experiencing this food crunch. In May 2024, three starving isolated Indigenous people left the Halmahera forest to beg for food at a Weda Bay Nickel mining camp.
Human rights organizations say that under international law, governments and mining companies must obtain Indigenous peoples’ free, prior and informed consent for their projects, and fairly share benefits with affected communities. Economic development goals should not be a reason to disrespect their rights, they say.
In cases where tribes live in isolation, advocates say they shouldn’t be contacted against their will and are unable to give consent. In June this year, German chemical giant BASF and French mining company Eramet pulled out of a $2.6 billion refinery project in Halmahera amid criticism of its impact on the tribe.
Suman Gebe says that despite the tribe’s objections, the O’Hongana Manyawa can only surrender to the course of events around them as Indonesia embarks on a development path and relationship with nature so different from their own.
Their lives will always be disturbed as long as the government refuses to follow up on a Constitutional Court ruling (stalled by parliament for more than 10 years) to recognize customary forests and the land rights that come with it. Several institutions in Indonesia are also actively pushing the government to recognize forested areas that the O’Hongana Manyawa people have been relocated to and lived in for decades now.
So far, the government’s response to a bill on Indigenous peoples, helpd up in parliament for more than a decade, has been limited to providing assistance for land registration and coordinating with local governments.
Weda Bay Industrial Park, Weda Bay Nickel and the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources didn’t respond to Mongabay’s questions by the time of publication.
Banner image: Sumean Gebe, 42 from the O’Hongana Manyawa tribe posing after hunting in a jungle at the East Halmahera, North Maluku, Indonesia, on August 19, 2024. Image by Garry Lotulung.
BASF, Eramet drop $2.6b Indonesian nickel project that threatens isolated tribe
Citation:
Owen, J. R., Kemp, D., Lechner, A. M., Harris, J., Zhang, R., & Lèbre, É. (2022). Energy transition minerals and their intersection with land-connected peoples. Nature Sustainability, 6(2), 203-211. doi:10.1038/s41893-022-00994-6
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