Rabul Sawal, Central Halmahera – Stesya Tania dashes back and forth between the shop she attends and her bedroom where she checks on her perpetually ill daughter, Putri. Since they moved to Gemaf village in Central Halmahera regency, North Maluku, in 2021, her daughter has suffered from constant fever, wet cough and shortness of breath.
Doctors diagnosed Putri with asthma, Stesya said, forcing her parents to take their four-year-old daughter to a nearby clinic almost every month.
She blames Putri's sickness on the dust from a nickel mining and processing complex owned by PT Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP), located only 500 meters from Gemaf. The dust comes not only from passing trucks and heavy machinery on the village road, but also from the coal-fired power plants powering the facility.
"The house is swept clean every morning and evening, yet there is still ash that gets into the nooks and crannies," the 23-year-old mother explained during an interview on Feb. 19. "It even gets into the bedrooms, and that's what makes the children sick."
Promoted as a project to push the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy in Indonesia, the nickel mining and processing facility by IWIP in Central Halmahera uses coal to power the industry, at the cost of the environment and local residents' health.
IWIP is managed under a Chinese joint venture between the Tsingshan Group, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co. Ltd. and Zhenshi Holding Group Co. Ltd, with an initial budget of US$7.5 billion for the nickel project.
The nickel facility, which began its operation in 2018, is located among Gemaf in North Weda district, Lelilef Sawai and Lelilef Woebulen villages in Central Weda district, around four hours by car from the provincial capital of Sofifi.
Standing on a 4,027-hectare land, nearly the same size as 5,500 soccer fields, the industrial park comprises mines and smelters for nickel, a mineral often used to make electric vehicles (EVs), as well as its own seaport and airport.
It is powered by at least 13 coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 4,160 megawatts (MW), according to Global Energy Monitor. Only a thin concrete wall stands separating Gemaf and other villages from IWIP's captive power plant and coal storage.
Seen from the porch of 60-year-old Ferse Sigoro's house in Gemaf are the plant's smokestacks that billow black smoke around the clock.
"At night, the sky turns red as the air mixes with dust," Ferse said. "We don't feel comfortable anymore living here. It gets dusty day and night."
Sick villages
As more people move into villages around the IWIP complex, they face a growing risk of health hazards from pollution emitted by the company's power plants and other industrial activities.
A study issued in 2023 by the Association of People's Emancipation and Ecological Action (AEER), a Jakarta-based energy think tank, pointed to the captive power plants as the source of the rising PM10 and PM2.5 fine particulates detected on the main road near the Lelilef Woebulen. The levels exceed standards recognized by the government and the European Union.
Acute respiratory infection has become the disease most often recorded in the villages.
The Lelilef Puskesmas (community health center) in Central Weda district recorded 351 cases of acute respiratory infections in 2018. But the number has been steadily increasing each year, reaching 2,745 in 2024.
The percentage of sick people to the total population in North and Central Weda was 43.4 and 20.7 percent, respectively; higher than the respective provincial and national average at 1.2 and 2.2 percent.
As the number of patients increases, the economy of villagers and the region in general has also been hurt.
Stesya's family, whose monthly income is around Rp 8 million (US$491), may spend up to Rp 600,000 every month on clinic bills.
For the whole North Maluku, the total cost to treat diseases triggered by pollution from captive coal power plants will reach Rp 8.5 trillion by the end of 2025 and grow to Rp 12.3 trillion in the next decade, according to an estimate from the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
The region may also see 5,000 premature deaths and an additional Rp 54 trillion in economic burden by 2030 if the current growth rate of the nickel industry persists without proper emission and environmental controls, according to the CREA in a separate report.
But Stesya and her family have limited alternatives. Her husband, who works for IWIP, is also a member of the Sawai tribe who has lived in Gemaf for generations.
"The least we can do is not let our children spend a long time outside because everyone is getting sick," Stesya said. "We're afraid that the children will continue being ill."
The Jakarta Post reached out to IWIP in April for an interview in response to the data, however the company's representative did not respond to the request.
Reform needed
To prevent the worst outcome in the region, the government should hold off new nickel industry permits to allow authorities to fix environmental governance on existing smelters, said CELIOS executive director Bhima Yudhistira.
Bhima also urged the government to revise Presidential Regulation (Perpres) No. 112/2022 that provides legal avenues for the construction of new captive coal power plants.
AEER researcher Timotius Rafael urged the government to immediately issue a nickel decarbonization roadmap, which would serve as a regulation to force the industry to reduce its environmental impact by, among other means, adjusting the production rate with the available renewable energy potential and controlling the mineral's extraction.
"Don't allow the ambitious target for nickel downstreaming to boost the economy to leave wounds and bad impressions," Timotius said. "Decarbonization must be done by stopping coal power plants and switching to renewable energy, so the damage in North Maluku won't get worse."
Gemaf villagers Stesya and Ferse concurred, hoping that the government would work to restore the degraded environmental condition in their home, starting with cleaning the air.
Ferse hopes the company will not add more coal power plants, however, an additional power plant is already under construction in the industrial park.
"The air is already polluted now," he said. "What will happen if they build more here?"
[This story was supported by the Association of People's Emancipation and Ecological Action (AEER) through a reporting grant and fellowship on decarbonization in the industrial sector.]