Two men, with long black hair and loincloths around their waists, are waving sticks. Only a few meters away, on the other side of a river, a vehicle revs its engine. Immediately, the two thin silhouettes plunge into the forest. These images were filmed at the end of 2023 on the island of Halmahera, in Indonesia, by employees of a mining company: they testify, according to the NGO Survival, to the presence of an uncontacted indigenous tribe, the Hongana Manyawa, near the mine of nickel from Weda Bay, where the French group Eramet operates.
For months, international organizations have denounced the practices of companies present on the Halmahera industrial site, accused of violations of human rights and the environment. These concerns are further reinforced by the new project from Eramet, a company 27% owned by the French State: it plans the construction, with its German partner BASF, of a processing plant near the mine. A facility, called Sonic Bay, which could benefit from direct financial support from Paris through an investment fund dedicated to critical minerals and metals, launched in 2023.
“We are extremely concernedexplains Callum Russell, Asia specialist at Survival. Mining activities in this remote region risk not only destroying the forests and rivers that the Hongana Manyawa need to survive, but also introducing deadly infectious diseases. The Sonic Bay project will only massively encourage these activities. » In the absence of robust environmental and social criteria, “the new investment fund for critical minerals risks financing projects leading to deforestation and human rights violations”is also alarmed by Klervi Le Guenic, tropical forest campaign manager for the French NGO Canopée.
An essential mineral for the energy transition
Nickel is a particularly coveted ore: involved in the manufacture of batteries, it is essential to the energy transition, and therefore to the fight against global warming. Between 2017 and 2022, demand for nickel has already jumped by 40%, according to the International Energy Agency. Indonesia is the world champion in the production of this mineral, and the Weda Bay mine is considered the largest deposit on the planet.
The history of this dealership begins two decades ago. In 1996, a young Australian geologist began exploring the site, going 40 kilometers inland from Halmahera. He discovers “a thick jungle, not really inhospitable despite its snakes, its spiders, its sleeping kuskus [des marsupiaux] and its hundreds of species of birds », according to the account given by Eramet. “In these remote lands sometimes live the Hongana Manyawa, semi-nomads”, specifies the group. Operation of the Weda Bay mine only finally begins in 2019, in partnership with the Chinese company Tsingshan.
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