• Indonesia’s highest court has ordered the revocation of the environmental permit for a zinc-and-lead mine being built in a seismically active zone in Sumatra.
• The ruling upholds a lower court’s decision last year that sided with independent scientific analysis that the region was far too prone to earthquake risk for the planned mine and its waste dump to be feasible.
• Residents of communities living near the planned mine in Dairi district, North Sumatra province, have welcomed the ruling, saying they hope it puts “a stop to this stupidity.”
• The mining developer’s Chinese and Indonesian backers, however, say they will appeal the ruling, and there’s no indication the environment ministry will comply with the order to revoke the permit.

In its Aug. 12 ruling, the court upheld a lower court’s earlier decision that the environmental permit should never have been issued in the first place in light of experts’ warnings of potentially disastrous fallout due to the project’s location on an active tectonic fault.

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Data from news portal Volcano Discovery show there are about 41 earthquakes on average per year in or near Dairi. So far this year alone, Dairi has experienced 27 quakes of magnitudes above 2, and up to 4.7.

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Despite repeated warnings from the experts, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry decided to approve the project’s environmental assessment in August 2022, issuing an environmental permit that essentially greenlit the mine.

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In response to the permit approval, 11 residents filed a legal challenge with the Jakarta State Administrative Court in February 2023. In August that year, the court ruled in favor of the villagers, finding that the mining area was prone to disaster and thus unsuitable for mining. The court also ordered the ministry to revoke the environmental permit.

But both DPM and the environment ministry appealed the ruling to the high administrative court, which ruled in their favor in November 2023.

The villagers then filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which has now handed down the final ruling in the matter. It upheld the Jakarta administrative court’s ruling and found a lack of citizen participation in the project development. It also ruled the project’s environmental approval wasn’t in line with the general principles of good governance, on top of the disaster risk.

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China has been a major financier of the project, with the state-controlled Carren Holdings Corporation Limited agreeing earlier this year to loan $245 million to mine developer DPM.

Carren’s decision to fund the project, despite the controversies surrounding it, likely stemmed from ignorance and misinformation, Mangatur said. But the Supreme Court’s ruling should give the financiers pause, he added.

Beijing-based metals and mining company China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Co., Ltd. (NFC), DPM’s parent company, said the court’s ruling might affect the project’s progress, but insisted it would go on nonetheless.

NFC said DPM will also cooperate with the environment ministry to appeal the ruling.

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