Indonesian Nickel Mining. The GOOD, the BAD and the UGLY. (ep 267)
July 27, 2024 · 10 min · 10K views · Sulawesi
What this video covers
Vernon and Marie-Morgane anchor for a week at Lubanki Island off Sulawesi's east coast — a pristine, uninhabited bay shared only with hornbills and parrots — then motor north and round a headland to find the opposite: a peninsula stripped of forest, its slopes scraped to bare red earth feeding a continuous stream of ore-laden barges.0:26 The contrast between the two coastlines, separated by only a few miles, prompts an hour of drifting observation through binoculars and an afternoon of research.3:57 Indonesia is the world's largest nickel producer, generating 1.6 million tonnes in 2022 — nearly half global output — with most extraction concentrated in Sulawesi and Halmahera.6:16 The Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, the largest nickel processing site in the country, sits nearby: 3,000 hectares, 80,000 workers, 18 companies, $15.3 billion in total investment, and a 2-gigawatt coal power plant consuming 9 million tonnes of coal annually, barged in from Kalimantan.7:29 Sediment runoff from the stripped slopes has visibly discolored the sea and almost certainly destroyed surrounding coral.5:41 Local fishing villages have lost both their fishing grounds and their farmland.8:49 The crew frames the tension plainly: nickel feeds the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles and their own boat's solar storage, making the destruction a direct consequence of the "green" energy transition.7:51
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