location: North Maluku

location: North Maluku

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BASF, Eramet drop $2.6b Indonesian nickel project that threatens isolated tribe
- Germany’s BASF and France’s Eramet have pulled out of a $2.6 billion nickel-and-cobalt refinery in Halmahera, Indonesia, amid criticism that the mine supplying it threatens the forest home of an isolated Indigenous tribe.
- The refinery is part of the wider Weda Bay Nickel project, the world’s biggest nickel mine, whose concession overlaps with forests that are home to the hunter-gatherer Forest Tobelo people.
- Neither company mentioned the threat to the tribe in announcing their withdrawal from the project, attributing the decision instead to changing supply dynamics.
- Activists have welcomed the withdrawal as a respite for the Forest Tobelo, but this could be temporary, as Indonesia’s investment minister says the government is still negotiating with BASF and Eramet to return to the project.

Indonesian nickel project harms environment and human rights, report says
- A new report highlights land rights violations, deforestation and pollution associated with a massive nickel mining and processing project on the Indonesian island of Halmahera.
- Community members accuse the developers of the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP) of land grabbing and of polluting rivers and the sea.
- The Indonesian government has billed its nickel policy as a push toward clean energy, but mining of the metal has resulted in at least 5,331 hectares (13,173 acres) of deforestation on Halmahera alone.
- The report calls on global automakers sourcing their nickel from IWIP to exert pressure on the miners and smelters to prevent environmental and human rights harms.

Indonesian regulator gets 12 years’ jail for palm oil permit bribery
- An Indonesian court has sentenced a senior land agency official to 12 years in prison for taking bribes from palm oil and mining companies to expedite their permits.
- Muhammad Syahrir, formerly the head of the land agencies in Riau and North Maluku provinces, was found guilty of taking the equivalent of $1.38 million in bribes from various companies over the course of five years.
- In addition to the jail sentence, the court also imposed fines totaling $1.5 million; failure to pay could incur additional prison time of up to three and a half years.
- The case has spurred calls for a sweeping evaluation of the permitting process, not just in the palm oil industry, but across all sectors in Indonesia, where bribery is common.

Indonesia permit payoff raises alarm about palm oil industry corruption
- The ongoing trial of an Indonesian official accused of taking bribes from palm oil companies to expedite their permits has prompted calls for greater scrutiny into corruption in the sector.
- Muhammad Syahrir, formerly the head of the land agencies in Riau and North Maluku provinces, is accused of taking 20.9 billion rupiah ($1.36 million) in bribes from various companies over the course of five years.
- In the case at the center of the trial, Syahrir is alleged to have solicited the equivalent of $228,000 from palm oil company PT Adimulia Agrolestari to renew its right-to-cultivate permit, known as an HGU.
- Environmental law experts say the secrecy around HGU permits is what allows corruption to flourish, and have renewed calls for the government to make the permit data publicly accessible.

Captive to coal: Indonesia to burn even more fossil fuel for green tech
- Indonesia is building several new coal-fired power plants for industrial users, despite its stated commitment to start phasing out coal and transition to clean energy, according to a new report.
- These so-called captive coal plants will have a combined capacity of 13 gigawatts, accounting for more than two-thirds of the 18.8 GW of new coal power in the pipeline.
- Most of the plants will feed the nickel, cobalt and aluminum smelters that the government is promoting in an effort to turn Indonesia into a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries.
- Critics say the building spree goes against both these green technology aspirations and Indonesia’s own climate commitments, but regulatory and funding loopholes mean the government can freely build more new captive coal plants.

In Indonesia, companies defy government’s decision to revoke their permits
- Logging, plantation and mining companies have continued to operate and have been mired in conflicts with communities since their permits were targeted for revocation by the Indonesian government, a new report says.
- In Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua alone, four palm oil companies cleared 943.3 hectares (2,331 acres) of forests in the first four months of 2023 — an area three times the size of New York’s Central Park.
- Civil groups have been calling on the government to redistribute the revoked concessions to local and Indigenous communities, but they say their calls haven’t been heard.

Indonesian ‘island auction’ to go ahead despite concerns over permits
- Shares of a private company with the rights to develop tourism facilities within a marine reserve in Indonesia have reappeared for auction later this month despite the government’s plan to annul an agreement with the firm.
- The government plans to revoke developer PT LII’s 2015 memorandum of understanding with local authorities, including the rights to develop the Widi Islands for 35 years with a possible extension of another 20 years.
- The company’s plan has met mounting concerns in Indonesia, with experts saying it would be essentially selling the islands off to foreigners and cutting off local fishing communities from a key source of livelihood.
- The Widi Islands are also part of a marine reserve in the Pacific Coral Triangle, a region that’s home to the highest diversity of corals and reef fishes in the world.

Indonesian authorities nip island auction in marine reserve in the bud
- Indonesian officials have sought to neuter an apparent bid to auction off private tourism enclaves to foreign investors in a marine reserve in the country’s east.
- Shares of Bali-based developer PT Leadership Islands Indonesia (LII) had been up for bidding via Sotheby’s Concierge Auctions in New York from Dec. 8-14, but the deputy environment minister said this had now been annulled.
- LII holds the rights to develop tourism facilities in the Widi Islands, but not to sell off individual islands to foreign investors, which is against Indonesian law.
- The Widi Islands are part of a marine reserve in the Pacific Coral Triangle, and while most of the islands are uninhabited, they hold high social, cultural and livelihood importance for local fishing communities.

In Indonesia’s Spice Islands, some farmers are going back to organic
- Kamil Ishak is one of the few organic farmers on the island of Ternate in Indonesia’s North Maluku province, part of the legendary Spice Islands.
- These organic farmers are moving away from agrochemicals and turning to organic fertilizers and pesticides, often making it themselves.
- Local authorities are supporting the organic farming initiative and encouraging more farmers to adopt the method.

Red seas and no fish: Nickel mining takes its toll on Indonesia’s spice islands
- Fishermen in Indonesia’s Obi Islands blame the nickel mining and smelting industries for the depletion of fish in their traditional fishing grounds.
- Researchers say the pollution has turned the coastal waters into a “mud puddle” because of the high levels of heavy metal contamination.
- One of the main mining companies there had previously proposed dumping 6 million tons of waste a year into the sea, but backed down following protests.
- The company is now proposing clearing a forest area to build a tailings dam — a plan that activists and fishermen say is no better because of the persistently high risk of environmental contamination.

In Indonesia, a coastal town rejects ‘metropolitan’ model for mangroves
- Sofifi, the tiny capital of one of Indonesia’s remotest provinces, has made mangrove conservation and ecotourism a central part of its development.
- The town recently inaugurated the Guraping Mangrove Tourism Forest, which officials hope will draw tourists to the town and help it develop into something greater than an administrative hub.
- Indonesia is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s mangrove forests, an important ecosystem that sequesters carbon, blunt the impact of storm surges, and harbour a rich array of marine life.

Links to coal mining add to Indonesian palm oil sector’s risk for buyers
- Six of the top 10 palm oil conglomerates in Indonesia have coal mining businesses, and five of the top 10 coal miners have oil palm businesses, a new report shows.
- This substantial overlap means that consumer goods giants like Nestlé and PepsiCo that buy palm oil from Indonesia are potentially exposed to mining risk too, including deforestation and pollution.
- While most of the palm oil companies have zero-deforestation policies and sustainability commitments, the affiliated mining companies aren’t scrutinized as closely and have often been associated with environmental degradation, human rights abuses, and worsening climate change.
- The report authors say this poses reputational and financial risks for the consumer goods companies that buy from the palm oil firms, and for the banks and investors that fund them.

Indonesian miners eyeing EV nickel boom seek to dump waste into the sea
- Nickel-mining companies in Indonesia have pitched the government to allow them to dump their waste, or tailings, into the sea.
- The country is the world’s biggest producer of nickel, one of the key elements in the rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles and energy storage systems.
- Indonesia already has a copper and gold mine that practices deep-sea tailings disposal, or DSTD, with devastating impacts on the local ecosystem, activists say.
- Indonesia and neighboring Papua New Guinea are home to four of the 16 mines around the world that practice DSTD, but account for 91% of the estimated 227 million tons of tailings dumped into the ocean.

In Indonesia, a flawed certification scheme lets illegal loggers raze away
- The seizure of more than 400 containers of illegally logged timber in a series of busts since last December has shone a spotlight on Indonesia’s mechanism for certifying legal timber.
- Some of the wood has been traced back to companies certified under the country’s SVLK scheme. That’s the same scheme that the EU relies on to ensure that its imports of Indonesian timber are legally harvested.
- The seizures and findings by activists highlight increased illegal logging in the relatively pristine eastern Indonesian regions of Maluku and Papua.
- Companies engaged in illegal logging exploit a variety of methods, from cutting in abandoned concessions to using farmers’ groups and indigenous communities as fronts for harvesting in areas that would otherwise be off-limits for commercial logging.

Indonesia creates three marine protected areas within Coral Triangle
- Indonesia has designated three new marine protected areas (MPAs) in the waters of eastern North Maluku province.
- The new protected zones are expected to improve the local fisheries sector and support national food security.
- The establishment of the areas is part of the government’s target to create 200,000 square kilometers (77,200 square miles) of MPAs by 2020; it has already achieved 96 percent of that goal.

Indonesia’s dying timber concessions, invaded by oil palms, top deforestation table
- A study shows that selective-logging leases accounted for the highest rate of deforestation in three provinces studied from 2013 to 2016.
- While the discovery came as a surprise, the researchers attributed part of that deforestation to the illegal encroachment of oil palm plantations into many of these timber concessions. Another factor is the cutting of more trees than permitted by logging operators.
- Environmentalists warn the problem could get even worse if the government follows through on plans to lift a ban on exports of unprocessed logs, which has been in place since 1985 (with a brief hiatus from 1997 to 2001).

In eastern Indonesia, a forest tribe pushes back against miners and loggers
- The Forest Tobelo, an indigenous tribe in Indonesia’s North Maluku province, faces constant threat from illegal loggers and the expansion of mining leases.
- More than one third of the province’s total area has been allocated for mining leases.
- The community has chosen to fight back by drawing up its own maps of the land to which it has long laid claim, and by reporting illegal incursions into its forests.

Kalaodi, Tidore’s eco-village in Indonesia’s spice capital
- In 1972, Indonesia’s central government mapped Kalaodi, a village of 454 people, into a protected forest.
- Locals were upset because the protected status robbed them of the ability to continue their centuries-old tradition of cultivating spice groves.
- Today, Kalaodi residents are taking the first steps towards restituting past government oversteps.

Revealed: Australian miner used arbitration threat to upend Indonesian environmental law
- In the early 2000s, Australia-based Newcrest Mining was one of 13 companies to win an exemption from Indonesia’s 1999 Forestry Law, which banned an environmentally destructive form of mining in protected forest areas.
- The companies had obtained permits from Indonesia’s military government, but when the regime fell in 1998, the newly democratized country tried to implement new rules to protect its forests.
- Newcrest responded by threatening to sue the Indonesian government in a secretive international tribunal presided over by corporate lawyers, under an instrument of international law known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).
- ISDS is written into thousands of trade and investment treaties, including the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Indonesia’s antigraft agency strives to rein in the mining sector
- Indonesia’s anticorruption agency has become involved in a number of initiatives to improve governance of natural resources in the archipelago.
- One such effort, focused on the mining sector, involves 12 provinces and has resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of permits.
- This initiative, known as Korsup Minerba, recently produced an assessment of the provinces’ progress in reining in the miners under their watch.

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