In neighboring Indonesia, nickel extraction is causing environmental and social devastation.
This March, a group of women gathered under the roof of a modest wooden shop in the Kurisa fishing village on Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo. They held iced drinks in their hands and babies to their breasts.
It was a hot, dusty afternoon, and some of the older children were playing tag. The women were gossiping, but mostly, they talked about how there were no fish for their husbands to catch these days. “Making a living from the sea isn’t enough anymore,” said one woman. “Kurisa is dying.”
Kurisa has been home to the Bugis Wajo people for generations. Houses are propped up by rows of wooden stakes so that they stand over the Banda Sea, with fishing boats docked underneath. Traditionally, the men go out to sea to bring home red and white snappers, tuna, octopus, and other seafood for the women to cook, and children are encouraged to fish from a young age.
Kurisa resident and fisherman Herdiantxo Anton, 32, told Rest of World that when he was a teenager, the clear water under the houses was full of wildlife, playing hide-and-seek in the coral that grew there. That was before large corporations began to set up nickel-processing factories in the villages nearby.
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