Focus on Arts and Ecology

Hastati, 45, a resident of Sukarela Jaya village on Wawonii Island, is a farmer. She grows coconuts, nutmeg, cloves and cashews on the family’s two-hectare plantation.

In recent years, however, life on her plantation has grown challenging. Clean water, once readily available from wells, has become scarce. For daily water use, including cooking, Hastati must now collect it from a river.

Project Multatuli found that the Banda Spring, which supplies five villages including Hastati’s, has turned murky due to mining by PT Gema Kreasi Perdana, a subsidiary of the Harita Group, an Indonesian natural resources conglomerate. The nickel company offers them clean water, but Hastati and some other residents refuse to accept it in protest.

At one point, Hastati claims she was offered IDR 1 billion (USD 63,000), along with promises of a free pilgrimage to Mecca (the holiest city for Muslims), educational aid for her children and a job at the mine. But, like many others on Wawonii Island, she turned it down.

“We want to protect our land and Wawonii Island. It’s better for us to stand on our own,” she said.

In Dompo-Dompo Jaya village, the murky tap water forces Saharia, 50, a single mother of four, to set basins on her rooftop to catch rainwater. She often hauls a sand cart to collect water from the Roko-Roko River, 500m from her home. As the family has limited clean water options, they have cut back on water usage, even restricting showers – a particular challenge for the four women in the household, especially during their periods.

They still sometimes use tap water to shower, which often leaves their skin feeling itchy, causing Saharia to worry about their health.

In Mosolo, Ristan, 24, struggles to soothe her baby, Abyan, who suffers from severe itching.

When he was just five months old, tiny spots appeared around his calves, then spread to his toes and soles. The nine-month-old baby’s legs are now covered in black wounds, scarred from months of scratching. Ristan’s husband and parents have developed black spots and itching, too. Her mother, Nahati, 65, has lived there since she was a child, but never experienced this kind of skin disease until the mining activities began nearby.

The family’s water source for daily use, including showers, is just 500m from a mining site. Every time it rains, the water becomes muddy.

The company denies pollution accusations

PT Gema Kreasi Perdana representative, Alexander Lieman, denied the company was behind the pollution. He said it had implemented preventive measures to mitigate contamination, including biannual monitoring of air quality and noise levels, regular road watering and controlling vehicle speeds.

“We undertook various programmes to comply with environmental regulations and protect the environment on Wawonii Island,” Lieman said. “As a goodwill gesture, we compensated the community for crops affected in areas covered by our forest use permits.”

Lieman said the company was also not to blame for the water pollution, arguing that heavy rainfall had turned rivers murky long before mining activities began.

“Our operations did not pollute the rivers around the mining areas,” he added.

He also dismissed allegations of water contamination in Mosolo village, saying the murky water in May had only been an issue in Sukarela Jaya and Dompo-Dompo Jaya.

“We firmly rejected these accusations. You could verify this with the village government and the local environmental agency,” Lieman said.

He added that the company had assisted affected residents by distributing clean water via trucks, deploying teams to locate alternative water sources, cleaning residents’ water storage tanks and digging bore wells and ring wells.

“The river water has now cleared, and residents are freely accessing clean water for their daily needs,” he concluded.

According to resident testimony, however, Lieman’s claims don’t match the reality on the ground. As of August, last year, the water flowing through pipes in Dompo-Dompo Jaya, Sukarela Jaya and Roko-Roko villages remained muddy and dark brown, despite a lack of significant rainfall.

The destruction of Gebe Island by nickel companies

The spring that Sunardi Jafar, known as Naryo, and neighbouring residents rely on is at Ueboelie Cape, less than a kilometre from their village on Gebe Island. This vital water source has served the community for years. But it now falls within the area controlled by PT Smart Marsindo, a nickel mining company that began operations in mid-2022.

As the company continues to clear the forest and extract nickel, Naryo, 24, fears that their last dependable water source might soon disappear.

Water sources are naturally scarce on Gebe Island. The island’s landscape is dominated by coral rock formations, with no large rivers or high mountains. Residents depend on springs, wells and lakes.

PT Aneka Tambang (Antam) began exploiting the land in the early 1980s to extract nickel ore. The state-owned company took over most of the coconut, nutmeg, clove and sago plantations, leading to the disappearance of many natural springs. When Antam ceased operations in 2004, the community faced hardships. Vessels that once supplied basic goods from Weda and Papua became scarce, prompting prices to skyrocket. The electricity supply – supplied by the mining company – was cut off, and there was no longer access to clean water.

PT Antam also left environmental destruction in its wake. Many laid-off residents turned to fishing, only to find reduced catches, while farmers struggled with pest attacks on their crops. Now, other nickel mining corporations are occupying the island.

In 2018, 12 mining business permits were issued on Gebe Island, covering more than half the island’s area, according to the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam). Eight of these companies (PT Smart Marsindo, PT Karya Wijaya, PT Aneka Niaga Prima, PT Mineral Trobos, PT Fajar Bhakti Lintas Nusantara, PT Anugrah Sukses Mining, PT Lopoly Mining, PT Bartra Putra Mulia) are linked to local and national political elites, party leaders, foreign investors and individuals involved in corruption cases, notably former North Maluku governor Abdul Ghani Kasuba.

Nickel mining has caused deforestation on the island, with mining runoff contaminating mangrove ecosystems and reducing water access, while nickel dust settled on soil, damaging agriculture.

Water shortages have forced families to spend up to IDR 840,000 (USD 53) monthly on water delivered by transport trucks – a considerable expense given the limited income opportunities on the island.

When Project Multatuli visited Naryo’s house, the water tank, with water supplied by the regional water company PDAM, stood empty. No water flowed from the tap. PDAM’s distribution arrives just once a week, but often less frequently. It had been over a month since they last had PDAM water.

Faced with this uncertainty, Naryo’s family has no choice but to rely on costly water deliveries, carefully rationing every drop.

Obi women struggle after the arrival of the nickel industry

Every time Lily Mangundap gazes upon the hill behind her home in Kawasi village on Obi island, a quiet fury stirs within her. Once lush with coconut and cashew trees, the hill now stands bare, stripped by the nickel industry.

In 2022, Obi had 12 active mining licenses, with five in Kawasi village and covering 10,769 hectares – about 80% of the village.

Lily moved to Kawasi after marrying her second husband, Andrias Datang. Andrias inherited a piece of land he cultivated from 1982 but was forced to abandon during the sectarian violence from 1999 to 2000.

Andrias later reclaimed the land, and they became farmers, planting 4,000 coconut trees and 20,000 cashew trees. But without warning, the government claimed their land, along with five other private holdings, as state-owned. The company then moved in with excavators, destroying their farm. “The coconut trees had just sprouted leaves when it [the company] demolished them,” Lily said.

Later, the company offered compensation based on a government decree that only covered her cashew trees, disregarding the coconuts, Lily added. They set the price unilaterally, offering IDR 129.7 million (USD 8,180), later raising it to IDR 160 million (USD 10,090) – a sum that she felt didn’t reflect the value of her land or the effort invested.

Lily and other residents refused the offer but faced intimidation: her husband was allegedly struck with the butt of a gun, and another resident, Dominggus Johanis, was imprisoned for six months.

The land dispute caught the attention of NGOs and legal aid groups, who offered to assist. The residents poured hundreds of millions of rupiah into funding these organisations to fight their case in local courts. Eventually, the case moved to Jakarta, where it has stalled since 2018. The couple has drained all their funds, fighting a legal battle they may never win.

Magdalena Johanes, another resident, said nickel smelting companies took over the road leading to the fields, making access difficult. Villagers now have to use private vehicles or rent a pickup truck to reach their fields.

The nickel companies have also polluted water sources like the Ake Lamo and Toduku rivers. According to Magdalena, villagers now rely on tap water from a nearby waterfall, but mining waste often contaminates it, making it unusable after heavy rains. Unable to afford bottled water, they are forced to rely on this same water source.

Daily expenses have also soared, as residents who once sourced vegetables, fish and firewood freely must now purchase everything.

Despite claims that the industry is environmentally friendly, it relies on coal-fired power plants (PLTU), adding pollution from nickel slag, fly ash and bottom ash.

The pollution has taken a toll on the community’s health. According to a village health report from 2021, 326 acute respiratory infections (ISPA), 276 cases of fever, and 118 cases of diarrhoea were recorded over a six-month period. Among those affected is Lily’s six-year-old daughter, Agnes, who now suffers from repeated respiratory infections.

The disappearance of fisher villages

As part of a 2019 agreement between the South Halmahera government and Harita Group, a new village was constructed for Kawasi’s residents. This 80-hectare settlement, located about one kilometre from the coastline, has raised concerns in the community due to its distance from the ocean. They have deemed the houses uninhabitable, being small, unstable structures, prone to collapse during rain or subsidence.

Ridwan La Tjadi, head of the environmental impact assessment section of the South Halmahera Environmental Agency, said the relocation is part of a broader strategic plan aimed at improving community welfare, describing the existing settlement as run down, littered with trash and disorganised. He added that the village’s proximity to the coast raised concerns about rising tides and tsunamis, and that its closeness to the industrial zone has exposed residents to disease risks, disruptions from heavy machinery and emissions from the PLTU.

But neither the local government nor the company communicated the relocation plan to Kawasi’s residents, leaving many anxious about moving from the coast, where they have lived and worked for generations.