The Dairi Women Who Took Down a Mining Operation

Subversion Diaries
Written By The Gender Security Project

Source: Mongabay

World over, extractive mining poses tremendous risks – both to land ownership and to the environment at large. Indigenous women have endured as significant actors in protecting their lands from degradation and in preventing their communities from erasure in the face of extractive settler colonial practices. The efforts of women from the Dairi community to resist a China-backed zinc mine in protecting their farmlands proved significant in 2023, as a court in Indonesia cancelled the environmental permits for the mining company.

Resisting with care

Based in Sopokomil village, near Lake Toba, the PT Dairi Prima Mineral (DPM), an Indonesia-based mining company majority-owned by a Chinese enterprise, was set to begin mining operations on the agricultural lands of the Dairi community. In 1998, Indonesia’s central government granted the company a contract to mine under the highland ridges in the Barisan mountain range, extending over almost 25,000 hectares, straddling North Sumatra and Aceh. Underground surveys demonstrated vast reserves of galena, a key ore of lead and silver, and zinc sulphide, the main zinc ore. The reserves are said to constitute 5% of the world’s total amount of zinc – a mineral that is essential for the construction, automotive, electronics, and other industries.

The mining operations threatened the Dairi community’s sources of water and agrarian land, putting at risk both their lives and livelihoods. Recognizing the damage that could ensue from these operations, Dairi farmers drew support from a range of Indonesian civil society organizations and began to object to the mining operations since 2000. They named the harm to their lives and livelihoods, as well as the potential for a massive humanitarian disaster from the resultant waste as major causes to avoid running the mining operations at all.

Holding the System Accountable

The group of actors resisting the mine included women farmers, the Diakonia Pelangi Kasih Foundation, Legal Aid and Advocacy for the People of North Sumatra (BAKUMSU), and the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), among others. In June 2023, Dairi women farmers came together to file a lawsuit, intending to  direct the environmental ministry to cancel the environmental permit for PT Dairi Prima Mineral. The women made a journey from Dairi to Jakarta, to advocate for themselves and their community at large. A month later, the Indonesian court ruled in their favour, cancelling the permit given to the company to begin mining.

In the run up to their move, however, DPM had been under significant international scrutiny. Researchers and advocates world over kept naming the challenges of the mining operations to the surrounding environment. Protests against the mining operations began in the early 2000s, where local Dairi farmers rejected the mining operations and opposed the project.

The winning endeavour is fully a product of the agency of the indigenous women who petitioned the court. In handing its decision, the high court noted that the Ministry of Environment and Forestry had not consulted the villagers living near DPM, and declared any further developments of the mine unlawful. Civil society aims to hold the central government accountable to the decision passed by the court, and groups of women farmers intend to continue to fight the zinc and lead mine.

The decision has far-reaching consequences. While DPM fully intends to go on appeal, if the decision was to be upheld, it would mean that all mining companies operating in Indonesia would need to align with higher standards to get their approvals. This is particularly significant as Indonesia is rapidly becoming a mining hub for critical minerals that are essential to support a green energy transition globally.  

References

The Gender Security Project
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