After GNI rejected their calls for, employees known as a strike from January 11 to 14. On the final day, greater than 500 security personnel have been dispatched to the commercial park. Workers who have been current throughout the strike say that safety forces fired pellet weapons on the crowd. “They fired pellets everywhere. It was chaos,” says one GNI employee. 

According to official reports, two employees, one Chinese and one Indonesian, died, and 71 have been arrested. A 100-room dormitory was burned down, and autos and equipment have been destroyed.

Huayue Nickel-Cobalt, Gunbuster Nickel Industry, Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, Tesla, and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.

But a statement from GNI’s normal supervisor, Teh Cha Les, printed on the corporate web site on February 15, stated there “are still things that are not optimal” relating to work security. “We strongly request instructions and guidance in order to improve a better, healthier, safer and more comfortable work environment for the entire workforce,” he added. 

The labor issues at IMIP sit alongside severe concerns in Indonesia about the environmental impact of the nickel industry. According to a Brookings Institute report in September, Indonesia’s nickel sector is “particularly carbon-intensive and environmentally damaging,” due to its reliance on coal.

More than 8,700 hectares of rain forest have been destroyed in the North Morowali Regency, where IMIP is based, since 2000, according to an analysis by Greenpeace Indonesia carried out on behalf of WIRED, as trees have been cleared to make way for mines, smelters, and the infrastructure needed to support them.

The erosion of the panorama has made it vulnerable to pure disasters. In June greater than 500 homes within the space have been hit by flash floods. Land clearance has made these an annual incidence, resulting in drownings and the destruction of properties, bridges, and authorities buildings. “The floods are now unavoidable due to massive land clearing that has occurred,” says Kasmudin, an environmental activist.

At Kurisa, a village on the southeast edge of IMIP, indigenous Bugis Wajo people told WIRED that the pollution has destroyed their livelihoods. “There’s no fish here anymore,” says Jus Manondo, a 45-year-old fisherman sitting on the wooden decking of his stilted home. “The waste from IMIP has killed them.”

In June 2021, a massive pile of coal fell into the hot water disposal of IMIP’s steam power plant and flowed directly into the sea, turning the water black, according to Manondo. Dumping of waste is common too. WIRED observed polluted water flowing directly into the sea a few hundred meters from Manondo’s home. 

Manondo’s hauls are now less than 20 percent of what they were a decade ago. The village’s fishermen are now forced to travel farther offshore to find fish, but with the high cost of fuel, it is a case of diminishing returns. “Sometimes we catch only enough to feed ourselves,” Manondo says. “Soon, we won’t even have that.”

However, despite the evidence that the rush for nickel, driven by the demand for EVs, has already pushed beyond the boundaries of social and environmental sustainability, the industry is still expanding in Indonesia.

Tesla chief government Elon Musk set out the goal of promoting 20 million EVs per 12 months by 2030—a rise of greater than 13 instances its anticipated gross sales in 2022. The firm’s rivals are additionally scaling up manufacturing of EVs. The automotive analysis consultancy Virta forecasts that there will likely be 140 million EVs on roads worldwide by 2030, up from 16 million in 2021. 

According to analysis by analysis firm Rystad Energy, demand for high-grade nickel will outstrip provide in 2024. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which makes 11 percent of the world’s nickel, has tightened the market additional and despatched costs on the London Metal Exchange to a 35-year high. 

To reap the benefits of the approaching squeeze, IMIP’s house owners are doubling the size of the location and are in the midst of constructing a second park, Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP), on the neighboring Maluku Islands, which is able to eventually span 5,000 hectares.

“Whatever profits this brings in, it won’t be enough,” says WALHI’s Hakim. “We can’t save the planet by destroying it.”

This story was reported with help from the Pulitzer Center.