In a land untouched by mines, indigenous holdouts fight a coal invasion

BATUTANGGA, Indonesia — Stretching across the slopes of the Meratus mountains, where the indigenous Dayak people strip rubber and harvest mountain rice, Central Hulu Sungai is the last district in Indonesia’s South Kalimantan province free of mining and palm oil. Locals in this remote part of Indonesian Borneo say protecting their land has tested their stamina, and they’re worried they may no longer be able to hold out against a new threat. In Indonesia, local governments retain broad rights to decide the fate of their land, and the struggle to curb questionable land deals often pits regulatory agencies in Jakarta against lax enforcement by provincial officials. But here in the forested slopes of Batutangga, a collection of villages islanded by karst towers, local people have found the opposite. In December 2017, despite the objections of local officials, the central government issued a mining permit to PT Mantimin Coal Mining (MCM), a nebulous coal company that has been trying and failing to obtain the required environmental impact assessment (EIA) for a decade. Locals quickly organized protests, and the environmental NGO Walhi in late February sued the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources for allowing Batutangga to be mined. Indonesia’s environmental laws require mining companies to present an EIA before they can be considered for a permit. Walhi argues in the lawsuit that the ministry not only ignored the legal process to grant a permit but also the concerns of residents. Any EIA, they maintain, would be illegal because it would not…

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