The people are mostly affected by the environmental damage caused by illicit mining practices.
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·3 minutes read
Kompas/Abdullah Fikri Ashri
A former nickel mining site in Hakatutobu village, Pomalaa district, Kolaka regency, Southeast Sulawesi, on Friday (3/11). A number of companies that had mined nickel in the area since 2008, stopped operations in 2014 because they did not have their own smelters.
We’re again dealing with illicit mining practices. The people are mostly affected by the environmental damage caused by such practices.
Today, the topic under discussion is nickel mining. Nickel reserves and resources are generally found at a shallow depth beneath the earth’s surface, which means that nickel mining companies dig open-pit mines.
Nevertheless, be it open-pit or underground mines, both types of mines can transform the environment from clearing vegetation, dredging the fertile top soil, destroying the river flow, changing the shape of plantations, and to environmental contamination and the loss of biodiversity.
Ironically, when the authority to issue mining licenses (IUP) was handed over to the regency/city governments, those local leaders freely issued the license, instead of becoming more careful about protecting their people and their environment.
In Southeast Sulawesi, for example, nickel mining began expanding in 2008. According to the Southeast Sulawesi Energy and Mineral Resources Office, from the total 389 IUPs, 196 are for nickel mining companies and comprise 188 IUPs for production and eight IUPs for exploration.
The result is that the hillside topsoil has been dredged, former mining pits have been left abandoned, the land has turned red and has been abandoned, and the seawater has been contaminated and the local fish population diminished. What can be done to deal with this?
We know that there are community mines and corporate mines. The government has actually issued Law No. 4/2009 on Mineral and Coal Mining (Minerba), but the law contains regulatory weaknesses with respect to community mines.
The Mineral and Coal Mining Law defines community mines based on size and production volume, not the method or equipment used. Consequently, miners ignore the environmental management that should be part of their responsibility. Therefore, community mining needs to be reorganized. This can start with reducing unlicensed mining activities, issuing licenses only to good community mines that meet the technical, administrative and financial requirements, and follow the and post-mining reclamation plans and other related activities.
Regarding corporate mines, the government could take tougher measures. In fact, a study shows that environmentally friendly mining practices costs only 5 percent of the capital and operational costs of a new mine. Moreover, energy saving methods and water management could reduce these cost significantly.
We need also to expand the implementation of Proper, the rating-based assessment of a company’s performance and one of the Environment and Forestry Ministry’s efforts to ensure company’s compliance with environmental management requirements, so that the mining sector is well organized.
