JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament is fast-tracking amendments to the country’s mining law, in a move that could reshape the country’s mining landscape for the worst, say activists who warn of environmental catastrophe and democratic erosion.

The most controversial provisions in the amendments would allow universities and religious organizations to acquire mining permits without bidding.

Bob Hasan, who chairs parliament’s legislative committee, said the revisions are needed to speed up the “downstreaming” of critical minerals necessary for Indonesia to be self-sufficient in energy. These include nickel, of which Indonesia is the world’s top producer, along with copper and aluminum, all of which are deemed essential for renewable energy technologies.

Civil society groups have lambasted the proposed changes, saying they weaken governance, environmental oversight, and community protections, all in the name of supporting and growing the mining industry and the extraction of critical minerals to make Indonesia a key player in the electric vehicle battery industry.

By making it easier for a wider range of players to get into mining, including those with zero experience in the field, the amendments serve as “a catalyst to speed up [environmental] destruction,” said Mareta Sari from watchdog group the National Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam). “In the past, [mining licenses were] given to big companies, but now they’ll be given to religious organizations and universities.”

Mining in Indonesia has long been linked to significant environmental degradation impacting forests, water quality, local communities and the climate.

A 2022 study of 26 tropical mining countries found Indonesia accounted for 58% of the direct forest loss attributed to mining, amounting to 190,100 hectares (469,750 acres) from 2000 to 2019.

Many of the country’s coal miners fail to carry out their legal obligations to rehabilitate their concessions once they’re finished mining, leaving behind more than 1,000 abandoned mining pits. These same coal mines are also responsible for massive methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas that significantly contributes to climate change, that are estimated to be up to eight times higher than official figures suggest.

The country is already the sixth-biggest fossil CO2 emitter globally, thanks largely to the burning of coal for electricity, surpassing countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

By going all in on resource extraction, this time on the pretext of clean energy, the government is contradicting the image it’s trying to burnish of the country as a climate and environmental champion, said Zainal Arifin, head of advocacy at the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI).

Everyone gets a mine

Under the proposed amendments, universities will be granted priority access to mining areas for metals like nickel, while religious organizations will be eligible for coal mining concessions.

These provisions, outlined in Articles 51(a) and 75 of the amendments, mark a significant shift in Indonesia’s resource governance.

Critics say it sets a dangerous precedent by aligning public institutions with the environmentally and socially contentious mining industry. This could lead to a loss of public trust in these institutions, traditionally seen as moral and educational authorities.

In the case of universities, there would be a conflict of interest between their commitment to objective research and academic freedom, on the one hand, and the desire to turn a profit, on the other, according to Masduki, a member of the KIKA coalition of researchers and students advocating for human rights and academic freedoms.

And if the mine ends up having an adverse environmental or social impacts, then it’s unlikely the university that manages it will act as a watchdog to call out those harms, he said.

“[The university] might even be the party that perpetuates the violence,” Masduki said.

That makes these proposed changes an attempt to buy the silence of groups, such as scholars, that have traditionally been critical of government overreach, he added.

Government argument

Parliament, however, makes the case that the inclusion of nontraditional actors in mining is meant to promote inclusivity so that everyone can get a slice of the resource pie.

“[In the past] people suffered from the dust from coal [mining] or other impacts from the exploitation of minerals and coal,” said Bob, the legislative committee chair. “But now, this is an opportunity for people in Indonesia to directly conduct businesses [in mining].”

Yet this reasoning makes no sense, said Wahyu Perdana, head of natural resources politics at the research arm of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest Islamic organization — one of the groups that the government is trying to get to take on mining concessions. According to Wahyu, as long as the proposed changes target only religious organizations and universities, then by definition they’re not aimed at the benefit of society as a whole.

“If the mining permits are only given to priority groups, it means that people who don’t belong to these groups aren’t being prioritized,” he said.

Another argument trotted out by parliament is that revenue from mining will allow universities to lower their tuition fees. If anything, however, the problem of high tuition reflects the government’s own inability to fund academia adequately, according to Jatam, to the extent that it’s now pushing universities to seek revenue through environmentally destructive activities.

This argument also doesn’t hold water because there are other ways universities can raise funds, including by patenting their research, said Aryanto Nugroho, the Indonesia coordinator for transparency group Publish What You Pay (PWYP).

The higher education ministry said it would study the proposed amendments before concluding whether it’s a good thing for universities to be allowed to manage mines.

The inclusion of religious organizations in the amendments is a follow-up to the government’s decision to offer mining licenses to Indonesia’s two largest Islamic organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, in 2024. In May 2024, then-President Joko Widodo signed a government regulation to that effect. But this was promptly challenged at the Constitutional Court by a lawyer named Rega Felix, on the grounds that it violated the current mining law. The court’s justices, one of whom is Widodo’s brother-in-law, rejected the lawsuit in January 2025.

Yet despite the supposed win for the government regulation, parliament — dominated by parties loyal to Widodo, and now to his successor, Prabowo Subianto — has since gone on to try to enshrine the same provisions in the law.

“This means that the government and parliament admit that the 2024 government regulation violates the 2020 mining law,” Aryanto said.

No auction

Another problem with the proposed changes is that some of these “nontraditional mining actors” — universities, religious organizations, small and medium enterprises, or private companies involved in downstream processing — would be able to obtain mining licenses without going through a public tender.

Tenders are meant to ensure that resource allocation is carried out transparently and fairly, and that the winning bidders have the necessary technical and financial qualifications. Bypassing this process creates risks because it doesn’t address the environmental or social track records of permit holders, or the potential environmental impact of the mining operation, according to the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL).

This might lead to greater environmental degradation in regions already hit by mining activities, such as the nickel mining heartland of Sulawesi Island, said Syaharani, ICEL’s head of environmental management and climate justice.

As of 2020, there were 339 active nickel mining concessions covering a combined 836,000 hectares (2.07 million acres) of land, giving rise to a number of environmental problems. In Sulawesi, nickel mining has led to widespread deforestation and contamination of water sources, displaced local communities, and threatened marine ecosystems.

“Prioritizing granting mining licenses for downstreaming without considering environmental aspects and without evaluating the companies’ track record will open the door to greater exploitation [of natural resources] and worsen the governance of the mining industry in Indonesia,” Syaharani said.

It’s also unclear why parliament decided to put universities and religious organizations on the list of entities not required to bid through a tender, Aryanto said.

“Why do religious organizations and universities get a priority, while private companies have to go through tender? Aren’t religious organizations also private entities?” he said.

No change in spatial planning

Another problematic provision in the draft is the guarantee of no changes to zoning plans in mining areas, provided they align with current laws.

This means that if an ecologically sensitive area or Indigenous territory is discovered to lie inside a mining area, then the zoning can’t be changed: the land will still be mined.

ICEL said this effectively prioritizes mining interests over environmental conservation. “This revision shows that parliament is closing its eyes to the fact that mining activities threaten ecosystems and people’s living space with irreversible damage,” said ICEL program deputy Bella Nathania.

And while the provision gives a caveat by requiring that mining areas “align with current laws,” there’s still no room for affected communities to challenge the designation of their areas as mining zones, she noted.

Lawmaking oddity

The push to pass the amendments has also raised questions.

At 11 p.m. Jakarta time on Jan. 21, parliament’s legislative committee approved the draft amendment of the mining law, formally proposing it to the government.

The problem with this is that the committee only started deliberating at 11 a.m. earlier that same day. That means lawmakers approved the entire package of amendments in just 12 hours — record speed for a legislature that has notoriously allowed a bill on Indigenous rights to languish for more than 12 years.

Another red flag is that the deliberation process took place during parliament’s recession period, when regular committee meetings are put on hold so that lawmakers can return to their constituencies to gather feedback or conduct fieldwork. Part of the deliberations were also held behind closed doors, and the package of amendments wasn’t listed on the parliament’s docket of priority national legislation for this year.

Some lawmakers complained that they only received the academic paper of the amendments 30 minutes before the start of the legislative committee, and thus didn’t have the time to read it before the approval.

All these point to a legislative process that was unusually rushed and opaque, and likely violated multiple parliamentary procedural norms, critics say.

Why the rush?

Aryanto from Publish What You Pay said the expedited legislative process appeared to be driven by business interests, “as if there are oligarchs pushing for the revision to be done fast, not only to speed up [the mining of] coal, but also the exploitation of minerals.”

Jatam pointed out that both parliament and government are riddled with officials with strong ties to the extractive industries. Citing data from watchdog group Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), Jatam said 354 out of parliament’s 580 lawmakers, or three in every five, have businesses in the extractive industries or are affiliated with them. Fifteen members of President Prabowo’s cabinet also have ties to the extractive industries.

It’s therefore likely that these politicians and business elites are using the amendments as a tool for resource extraction to benefit their business interests, Jatam said.

Critics point to similarities with the 2020 omnibus law on job creation, passed despite some of the largest protests the country had seen since those that brought down the New Order regime in 1998. In the case of the omnibus law, and now the amended mining law, parliament effectively stripped away environmental safeguards and prioritized business interests.

Legislative chair Bob said that while his committee has formally approved the amendments, there are still more steps in the process before they’re passed into law, including deliberation with the government.

But given the many problems that have come to light, activists say parliament must stop the process.

“Besides the rushed process, the substance of the revision will also create new problems in the management of the mining industry and environmental sustainability,” ICEL said.

Citation:

Giljum, S., Maus, V., Kuschnig, N., Luckeneder, S., Tost, M., Sonter, L. J., & Bebbington, A. J. (2022). A pantropical assessment of deforestation caused by industrial mining. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(38). doi:10.1073/pnas.2118273119

Banner image: Aerial view of coal mining in East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

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