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mining
We Need a Global Movement to Unrig the System Exploiting Indonesian Nickel Workers
Labor activist Raraa Rahmawati argues that the hazards in her country’s nickel industry are part of the broader problem of a global economy rigged to favor the wealthy
Dec 09, 2025
Electric vehicle sales are rising rapidly around the world. But few people who purchase these cars know anything about the workers who produce them.
Labor activist Raraa Rahmawati is trying to change that for one group of e-vehicle supply chain workers: the more than 230,000 Indonesians who toil in the nickel mining and processing industry. Recently, she reported on the reality of these workers’ lives at an international “People’s Summit” held parallel to the G20 leaders meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Indonesia boasts the world’s largest reserves of nickel, a key component of the lithium batteries that power electric vehicles. To capture more of the value of this essential mineral, the national government banned raw nickel exports in 2020. This has triggered a boom in domestic nickel processing.
Who’s benefiting most from this boom? The Chinese firm Tsingshan ranks as the top investor in Indonesia’s nickel processing operations. The company has contracts to supply carmakers around the world, including a $5 billion deal with Tesla.
“People who buy electric cars think they’re contributing to a ‘just transition’ away from fossil fuels,” she told the international crowd in Johannesburg. “But they should know this is really just another form of extractivism."
Tsingshan’s founder and chairman, Xiang Guangda, has accumulated a fortune worth an estimated $3.7 billion. Known as the “Nickel King,” the Chinese tycoon closely guards his privacy. But Bloomberg last year spilled one revealing tidbit: that Xiang had purchased a $62 million mansion for his daughter in Singapore.
The contrast between the living and working conditions for Xiang’s family and his employees could not be more extreme. Rahmawati works with an organization, Sembada Bersama, that is documenting the severe workplace hazards in this industry.
In a new report, Sembada Bersama reveals disturbing information about the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park, a massive nickel mining and smelting complex in a former rainforest in the northern part of the Maluku Islands. Tsingshan owns the largest share of the project.
The most disturbing finding: an apparent pattern of “sudden deaths” among the plant’s workers, who are mostly 25 to 35 years old. Nearly every worker Sembada Bersama interviewed was aware of these tragic incidents. Rahmawati said that while lack of transparency and oversight make it impossible to prove, these deaths are likely the result of cardiac arrests related to grueling working conditions.
Smelter operators typically work two 12-hour shifts over two days, often having to rotate between day and night shifts, with a third day off. To document additional hazards, Sembada Bersama collaborated with workers to take meter readings inside the smelters. The data they collected reveal workplace heat temperatures of as high as 108.5°F, excessive levels of inhalable dust particles that can cause respiratory disease and cancer, and noise levels high enough to cause permanent hearing loss.
These occupational health risks come on top of the Indonesian nickel industry’s devastating environmental costs and high accident rates. Two years ago, an explosion at a Tsingshan plant left 21 workers dead.
Tsingshan recently signed an agreement with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization to improve ecological practices and industrial skills training at its Indonesia operations. This suggests the firm is feeling some pressure. But with few alternative job opportunities, local communities and workers remain vulnerable to the enormous power of Tsingshan and other nickel corporations.
The Sembada Bersama report ends with detailed recommendations for the Indonesian government and corporations. Rahmawati also argues that the hazards in her country’s nickel industry are part of the broader problem of a global economy rigged to favor the wealthy. International solidarity and cooperation, she feels, will be key to unrigging the system.
“People who buy electric cars think they’re contributing to a ‘just transition’ away from fossil fuels,” she told the international crowd in Johannesburg. “But they should know this is really just another form of extractivism. We need a cross-border movement. It’s time for us to be united.”
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Over 150 Religious Orgs Endorse Salvadoran Mining Ban Reversed by Bukele
A joint letter expresses "steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining... so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water."
Dec 01, 2025
More than 150 faith-based organizations from 25 countries launched an open letter on Monday supporting an El Salvadoran ban on metals mining that was overturned by right-wing President Nayib Bukele in 2024.
The original ban was passed by the country’s legislature in 2017 following years of study and the advocacy of El Salvador’s religious communities. The letter signatories, which include 153 global and regional groups from a wide range of traditions, stood with faith groups in El Salvador in calling both for no new mining and for an end to the political persecution of land and water defenders.
"We, the undersigned, from a diversity of church structures (representing local, regional, and national expressions of churches and related agencies), express our steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining—in place from 2017 to 2024—so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water," the letter begins. "We stand in solidarity with civic and religious leaders who are being persecuted and imprisoned for working against injustices, including the devastation that metals mining would cause their communities."
The faith leaders also released a video reading sections of the letter aloud.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism."
“Through this declaration, faith communities from around the world have affirmed their solidarity with faith leaders in El Salvador as they carry out their duty to protect water as a sacred inherited trust, a human right meant to be shared by all,” Rev. Dr. Japhet Ndhlovu, executive minister for the Church in the Mission Unit of The United Church of Canada, said in a statement.
El Salvadorans already struggle to gain access to clean and plentiful water. The water of 90% of Salvadorans is contaminated, half of all Salvadorans have "intermittent access to water,” and one-half of those with water access report it is poor quality, said Gordon Whitman, managing director for international organizing at letter-signatory Faith in Action, at a Monday press briefing anouncing the letter.
"Restarting mining would be catastrophic," Whitman said.
The mining ban was already hard won.
A 2012 study commissioned by the government affirmed that mining would endanger the nation’s rivers and watersheds with cyanide, arsenic, and other toxins and found widespread public opposition to mining. Before the ban was passed in March of 2017, the archbishop of San Salvador mobilized support for it by leading a march to deliver a draft of the ban to the National Assembly. After it passed unanimously, he called it a "miracle," according to John Cavanagh, a senior adviser at the Institute for Policy Studies.
The law made El Salvador "the first nation on Earth to ban mining to save its rivers," Cavanagh said at the press briefing.
“The Salvadoran precautionary approach banning metal mining is essential to protect drinking water and aquatic ecosystems, given the irreparable damage that has been done by irresponsible mining around the world,” Willamette University professor emeritus Susan Lea Smith of the Ecumenical Water Network of the World Council of Churches said in a statement. “El Salvador had made a difficult but wise choice in banning metal mining. Clean water is a gift from God, and so, for the sake of clean water and the rest of Creation, we work together for the common good."
"It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
However, in December 2024, Bukele's government passed a new law that allows mining once again without environmental oversight or community consultation.
“It’s a law that has become one of the main threats for the Salvadorans' right to clean water," Pedro Cabezas of International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador said in the press conference.
Cabezas also said the new law was a "symptom of what El Salvador has been going through over the last five years” as Bukele concentrates all power within the executive and his own party.
While the Salvadoran public and civil society groups remain opposed to mining—a December 2024 poll found that 3 in 5 are against the practice in the country—the Bukele government has ramped up its criminalization of dissent.
In this context, the Catholic, protestant, and evangelical churches in El Salvador are among the remaining institutions "with space to speak out" against mining, Christie Neufeldt of the United Church of Canada explained at the briefing.
For example, in March, Mons. José Luis Escobar Alas, the archbishop of San Salvador, presented an anti-mining petition signed by 150,000 people.
International faith groups wanted to stand in solidarity with their Salvadoran counterparts.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism in the face of forces that would degrade” the Earth, human rights, and democracy, Neufeldt said.
Salvadoran faith groups "remind us that access to water is a fundamental human right and that clean water is not a commodity, but a shared inheritance entrusted to all people by God. And they remind us that ending the mining ban is fueling egregious rights violations against those organizing to protect their water and land from destruction," the letter says.
Whitman spoke about the importance of water to several religious traditions.
“All of our faith traditions teach that water is a sacred gift of God,” Whitman said, adding, "It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
In the press briefing, speakers acknowledged the link between rising authoritarianism and environmental deregulation, in El Salvador and beyond.
Cavanagh noted that, as the energy transition increases demand for rare earth minerals and global instability makes gold more attractive, "oligarchs linked to extractivism" have begun "pumping money into elections” to boost candidates who will allow them to exploit resources.
“It’s not at all surprising that the opposition to mining comes from the people, and so it’s absolutely natural that the oligarchs, that the transnational corporations are going to want to crack down on public dissent," Smith said, adding there was an "intimate connection between authoritarianism and any extractive industry, including mining."
In the end, however, the letter signatories expressed faith for a greener, freer future.
"We pray for the Salvadoran people and their government, that they protect the sacred gift of creation, uphold human rights, and ensure every family clean water—now and for generations to come," they concluded.
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Dispatches From the Winter of Our Discontent Against Woodside Energy's Carbon Bomb
It's been a winter in which our elected representatives still give primacy to commercial interests and the economy over the environment and cultural heritage of Western Australia.
Oct 19, 2025
“This year was a year of change, a year when secret fears come into the open, when discontent stops being dormant and changes gradually to anger. It wasn’t only in me… And it wasn’t only in the nation; the whole world stirred with restlessness and uneasiness as discontent moved to anger and anger tried to find an outlet in action, …” (John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent, 1961)
1 June
Winter 2025 begins with a still, sunny 23°C day in Perth, Western Australia (WA). It’s a reprieve from disgruntlement, discontent, and alarm about the state of the world, especially the genocide in Gaza and long war in Ukraine and, closer to home, the Australian environment minister’s "carbon bomb."
Four days earlier, and only two weeks after being sworn in as Australia’s new Environment Minister, Murray Watt announced his snap decision in favour of Woodside Energy’s bid to keep burning gas until 2070 at its North West Shelf (NWS) plant on the Burrup Peninsula in WA.
I’m still hoarse from chanting “Dis-rupt Bur-rup Hub!” to the rhythmic beat of Drummers for Climate Action at the dusk snap rally outside Parliament House the night before Watt gives conditional approval to Woodside’s "carbon bomb"—a fossil fuel project that will emit more than 1 billion tonnes of carbon pollution.
At home, it’s been a winter in which we witness the wanton destruction wrought upon WA’s native jarrah forests, endangered black cockatoos, fragile coral reefs, and ancient Indigenous rock art by rapacious mining companies.
Never mind the 500,000+ signatories to Greenpeace Australia’s petition to stop Woodside’s Burrup Hub expansion, the hundreds who called Watt’s office, and the thousands who emailed him to voice their objections in the week before his decision. Elections and environment ministers come and go, but none will stop the Woodside Energy juggernaut—Australia and WA’s second worst fossil fuels polluter, headed by American “Methane Meg” O’Neill, formerly of ExxonMobil.
3 June
Federal Cabinet meets in Perth, for the first time since the government was reelected in a landslide and since the March State election returned a Labor Government. Prime Minister (PM) Anthony Albanese responds to journalists’ questions about the NWS extension by emphasising the Government has a target for net-zero emissions (as if approving one of the top 10 fossil fuel polluting projects in the world will help us reach net zero by 2050). The PM sidesteps a question on community anxiety about the environmental impacts by saying he and the people of Karratha “support jobs and economic activities.” The NWS employs 900 people; 280 live locally in Karratha.
4 June
Conservation Council of WA holds another snap rally to protest Watt’s decision, coinciding with Cabinet’s visit. The invitation stipulates BYO “pots and pans and something to hit them with” (the pots and pans, that is, not the Cabinet ministers).
6 June
Three climate activists are fined $10,000 each for trying to take a “stink bomb” into Woodside’s 2023 AGM.
8 June
Premier Roger Cook defends WA’s rising greenhouse gas emissions since 2005, and the NWS extension, with the dubious claim that gas exports from the NWS help other countries decarbonise; spinning Woodside’s line.
20 June
I walk along the grassy banks of the Derbarl Yerrigan-Swan River between the new Boorloo (Perth) Bridge at the causeway and Matagarup (one-leg or knee deep) Bridge at the Optus Stadium, two kilometres upriver. The Whadjuk Noongar people know this place as Joorolup, from the time when there were jarrah forests here.
The Indigenous names for these new bridges co-exist with the naming rights of on-the-nose corporate giants that predominate our public infrastructure in this mining State. The Optus (Yes!) Stadium precinct includes the Chevron Parkland and BHP Boardwalk and Amphitheatre; Chevron and BHP are ranked, respectively, first and fifth of Australia’s "Dirty Dozen" carbon polluting companies.
29 June
For one week of winter, my husband and I go "down south." We’re 400 kilometres away in Walpole walking on the Bibbulmun Track through the tall Karri and Tingle forest—wilderness preserved by the WA Labor government’s decision 25 years ago to cease logging in old-growth forests.
1 July
Flinders Bay, Augusta: There’s a newborn Southern right whale calf with its mother. The marine biologist on the boat says it is unusual to see a calf so early in the whale migration season and a calf born in these cold waters is unlikely to survive to adulthood. It’s a bittersweet reminder of the fragility of our endangered species.
2 July
Driving home from the southwest to Perth on the Wilma Wadandi highway, we cross the Preston River and see the billowing smokestack of Alcoa’s 40 years old Wagerup Alumina Refinery to the east.
WA’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, Alcoa, like Woodside, has a voracious appetite for expansion. It wants to clear another 7,500 hectares of endemic jarrah-marri forest for bauxite mining—3,500 times the size of the 60,000-seat Optus Stadium.
Alcoa’s expansion would destroy up to 144,500 potential nesting trees for endangered black cockatoos—trees that can take up to 150 years to grow suitable hollows for cockatoos’ breeding, according to Birdlife Australia. Cockatoos’ foraging habitat will be lost for up to 11 years, at a time when starving Carnaby’s cockatoos are already being admitted to Perth Zoo for treatment.
The State’s Environmental Protection Authority received a record 59,000 public submissions on Alcoa’s proposal. So, will WA’s new environment minister halt the destruction of our native forests and endangered cockatoos’ habitat and food sources or will he enable their extinction, accelerated by an American-owned aluminium company?
10 July
A Disrupt Burrup Hub activist is fined for blocking access to Woodside’s NWS gas plant; the judge rejects her “climate emergency” defence.
12 July
News from Paris: Last night UNESCO approved Murujuga for World Heritage listing in recognition of its cultural value. Emissions are already damaging the ancient Indigenous rock engravings at Murujuga, adjacent to the NWS, according to eyewitness and measured evidence by local and eminent archaeologists. Minister Watt says he’s put the onus on Woodside to protect the one million Murujuga engravings, but how?
World Heritage listing should force the Government to protect the rock art to a higher standard, but will it?
12 August
World Heritage listed Ningaloo Reef and other reefs along the WA coastline are casualties of the worst marine heatwave ever recorded. It’s sad to see the extensive coral bleaching, caused by heat stress, and a “raging fever” in the case of Ningaloo which experienced temperatures up to 4°C warmer than usual. The Australian Institute of Marine Science attributes the damage to carbon-emissions induced climate change.
Obviously, World Heritage listing does not protect reefs (or rock art) from fossil fuels. That requires governments to stop recklessly approving new coal and gas developments. Will feverish and bleached corals on a possibly terminally-ill Ningaloo Reef give our governments pause for thought about Woodside’s plan to sink 50 gas wells near Scott Reef off the Kimberley coast?
17 August
Requiem for the Reefs held outside the Maritime Museum in Fremantle, which has an Open Day sponsored by Woodside the Reef-Wrecker! About 100 of us, including 3 of the 4 Greens members who now hold the balance of power in the WA Parliament, gather to mourn the bleaching of our once-colourful reefs. Voices for Climate sing; a violinist plays a lament at the edge of a mock reef; we hold up placards and chant, “Save Ningaloo. Save Scott Reef.”
22 August
In a fitting end to our Woodside winter of discontent, another court case goes Woodside’s way. Doctors for the Environment Australia loses its Federal Court case against the approval of Woodside’s Environment Plan for its Scarborough gas project—a floating platform from which to drill 21 wells 375 kilometres off the coast of the Pilbara with a pipeline to bring the gas onshore. Back in 2021, Woodside wanted to dump a 2,500-tonne mooring from a decommissioned floating oil rig next to Ningaloo.
31 August
Winter ends as it began with a deceptively sunny warm 22°C day in Perth.
A winter in which the world’s woes worsened. Israel continues bombing Gaza, and famine sets in. A winter in which Israel bombed Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. A winter in which America bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Iran fired missiles at the US military base in Qatar. A winter in which Russia continues its military invasion of Ukraine and still refuses peace talks. A dark violent winter.
At home, it’s been a winter in which we witness the wanton destruction wrought upon WA’s native jarrah forests, endangered black cockatoos, fragile coral reefs, and ancient Indigenous rock art by rapacious mining companies. A winter in which our elected representatives still give primacy to commercial interests and the economy over the environment and cultural heritage.
12 September
Wildflowers bloom on the banks of the Derbarl Yerrigan, and cygnets bob on its choppy waters on this windy spring day.
Australia’s environment minister confirms approval of Woodside’s NWS extension.
Winter is over, but our discontent lingers and deepens into anger.
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