Indonesia sees nickel as an opportunity for wealth and power, but that comes at a price

Sirajudin pulls his nearly empty nets into his boat after a long night. He only caught 2 kilos of fish. “I had to sail an hour out and an hour back. It costs me 3.5 euros for petrol. With what I have left of this catch I can’t even buy my pack of cigarettes”.

Fishing was a breeze in his fishing village in Sulawesi. He caught at least 10 kilos a day, simply by hanging the nets on the posts under the house. “It’s not possible anymore. Because the water got too hot. Because of the nickel factory there, which dumps polluted cooling water into the bay.” The fish fled the warm water and the shellfish died.

It is an example of the environmental damage caused by Indonesia’s huge nickel industry. A mine was built nine years ago behind Sirajudin village in Morawali region. Thousands of acres of jungle have been cleared for this. The industrial zone is now so gigantic that when you take off a drone at a height of 160 meters and fly it three kilometers, you still can’t see the end of the mine on the horizon.

Indonesia, host of the G20 summit this week, stands on the largest nickel reserves in the world. And nickel is the raw material of the 21st century. Because it’s necessary for rechargeable batteries, and therefore essential for electric cars that will take us to the green and clean world. But in Indonesia, huge environmental damage is done to achieve that green world.

About 500,000 hectares of forest have been cleared in Sulawesi, according to research by the Pulitzer Center. And that continues to increase every year, in line with the growth in the demand for nickel. Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen – nearly every major automaker has now invested billions in the nickel industry. And the Indonesian government has made the nickel industry a national priority.

This happened in part because Indonesia can make its dirty cities cleaner by building electricity infrastructure, says energy transition expert Elrika Hamdi. “All climate problems can be found in my own city, Jakarta, these days. Air pollution, floods, heat. All caused by dirty fossil fuels. Sustainable energy may deny it.”

Other benefits for Indonesia include wealth and power. Owning an important raw material for the global energy transition is useful for a country that is increasingly taking shape on the world stage. And the $1.3 billion now being earned annually from exports (and which should only grow) is a nice bonus.

These appear to be the reasons why Indonesia takes environmental damage for granted. In fact, scraping nickel out of the ground for our clean, green world takes energy. And that it currently comes from purpose-built coal-fired power plants, which spew their foul gases over the village of Sirajudin.

Life-changing, she says:

“More and more local residents have coughs,” Sirajudin says. According to research by the American Vox, it could be true. The number of respiratory infections is said to have grown in the region. And that won’t go down as long as more coal-fired plants are built. Three new ones are under construction in Morowali alone.

“It’s a really serious environmental dilemma,” says Elrika Hamdi. “It’s about finding a balance. Weighing the long-term pros and cons. Mining certainly has some form of destruction. But I’m sure the benefits of renewable energy are greater than the harm we’re causing now.”

There are alternatives to clean mining. For example, Indonesia could use geothermal energy to provide energy for mining. Or one of the many other forms of clean energy that can be found in Indonesia. “In Indonesia, we use only 2% of our clean energy sources, so there is still a lot to gain there,” Hamdi says.

Be that as it may, Indonesia will still not stop mining. She is fully engaged in a new world with more wealth and more power. A world in which Sirajudin the fisherman no longer fits. “I have to make ends meet. One day I have money. The next day I don’t. We depend on God’s blessings.”