East Kalimantan, Indonesia – Indonesia's Supreme Court has ordered the government to release environmental impact assessments for two projects at the country's new capital city, handing civil society groups a rare transparency victory.
The case brought by the East Kalimantan provincial chapter of the Mining Advocacy Network, a civil society organization known as Jatam, was formally read out at Indonesia's Information Commissioner, the KIP, in early March.
"It's a victory for the people in general, I think, especially those directly affected by the construction of the [new capital] infrastructure project in East Kalimantan," said Muh. Jamil, the head of Jatam's legal team on the case.
An environmental impact assessment is a legal requirement to assess the immediate and cumulative environmental impacts of a project. It also formally identifies measures required to prevent undue harm to an ecosystem.
The decision requires the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing to publish these environmental documents concerning the Sepaku Semoi Dam and Sepaku River intake, two utility water projects campaigners blamed for displacing Indigenous Balik families at Indonesia's largest-ever construction site.
The Balik community in Penajam Paser district numbers around 1,000 people and speaks a different language to the broader Dayak Indigenous groups living in East Kalimantan province.
The Sepaku River intake comprises transmission pipes running 16 kilometers (10 miles) to Nusantara, the new capital city, with a supply capacity of 3,000 liters per second (nearly 800 gallons per second).
The government calls the Sepaku Semoi Dam "a crucial supplier of water" for the new capital and nearby population centers. But local populations say the construction has impacted nearby settlements.
Around 35 graves of Balik ancestors dating back two centuries were marked for relocation as part of the dam construction, civil society groups say. Jatam says meeting transparency requirements set out by law would have enabled civil society to properly scrutinize the development plans.
"For Jatam, the documents such as the environmental impact assessment, technical documents, and other documents should be open to the public," said Abdul Azis, advocacy and legal lead at Jatam East Kalimantan.
Jatam had originally requested the government ensure public disclosure of these documents, and escalated the petition to the Information Commissioner more than two years ago, when the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing declined to disclose the documents.
The Supreme Court then ruled against an appeal filed by the ministry, a binding ruling that cannot be appealed.
The options available to government have narrowed and officials can likely delay implementation of the ruling only by opting for partial disclosure on national security grounds, or even seek a wholesale judicial review.
In 2019, then-president Joko Widodo announced he would move the central government of the world's fourth-most-populous country from Jakarta, on the island of Java, to Nusantara, a new site surrounded by forests and Indigenous communities on the east coast of Borneo.
Jokowi, as the ex-president is known, said the capital would cost 466 trillion rupiah, which was less than $23 billion at the prevailing exchange rate in 2019.
He claimed that taxpayers would pay only a fifth of the cost, with foreign investors ranging from Japanese tech investment conglomerate Softbank to the government of the United Arab Emirates lined up to fund the vast majority of the country's largest-ever infrastructure initiative.
Since then, just one company, a Dubai-based developer, has actually invested in the project.
Jokowi's successor, President Prabowo Subianto, says he remains committed to overseeing completion of the Nusantara project, but has slashed funding for it from the state budget since taking office in October 2024. That's raised fears that Indonesia's new capital could become a collection of stranded assets.
The Supreme Court judgement did not require the disclosure of engineering documents for the construction of the Sepaku Semoi Dam or the transmission pipelines on the Sepaku River.
"For two years, the community knew nothing – how then could these two projects proceed without their involvement?" Azis said. "They weren't informed about the environmental impacts."