Just Transition or Green Colonialism? The Impact of Indonesia’s Energy Transition on Indigenous Peoples
Indonesia is often presented as a global leader in the green energy transition. The country holds around 40% of the world’s geothermal potential, is the world’s largest producer of nickel, and continues expanding hydropower to support clean energy systems and electric vehicle production. These resources are promoted as key solutions to the climate crisis. However, for many Indigenous Peoples, this transition is far from just.
One of the main reasons for this injustice is the absence of a strong national law that fully recognizes and protects Indigenous Peoples’ rights. The long-delayed Indigenous Peoples Bill (RUU Masyarakat Adat) has still not been passed. Without this law, Indigenous Peoples remain legally vulnerable, with weak protection over their territories and governance systems. Their forests and territories can easily be allocated to mining, geothermal, plantation, and hydro power projects under state permits. In many cases, Indigenous Peoples are treated as illegal occupants on their own territories, while corporations receive legal recognition and state protection. This legal gap often brings land dispossession, violence, criminalization, and the destruction of ancestral territories.
In February 2026, representatives of Indigenous Peoples affected by energy transition projects from across Indonesia gathered in Jakarta for a Just Transition Workshop to collectively reflect on the growing impacts of these projects on their communities. These projects are nickel mining, hydropower dams, and geothermal plants. The workshop highlighted that many so-called “green” projects are reproducing old patterns of extractivism and exclusion under the language of sustainability.
Indigenous leaders emphasized that a just transition shall guarantee the protection of Indigenous territories, collective rights, women’s safety, and community self-determination. For Indigenous Peoples, the stakes go far beyond land ownership. As Indigenous leader Romba Sombolinggi explains:
“For us, as Indigenous Peoples, land is our identity and source of life. Upon it stand our customs and traditions, our rituals, and our sacred places, all deeply rooted in the history of our ancestors… Losing our ancestral land means losing the roots of our history and the future that has been passed down from generation to generation.”
The Jakarta meeting strengthened a shared national call to reject green colonialism and demand that Indonesia’s energy transition be rooted in justice, rights, and Indigenous Peoples’ leadership.
Poco Leok: Geothermal Expansion Without FPIC
Poco Leok in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, is one of the clearest examples. The Ulumbu geothermal expansion project has entered the Indigenous Peoples’ territory of 10 gendang, or Indigenous clan territories, in Poco Leok. Communities have rejected the project since 2011 because there has been no genuine Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). Permits were issued without FPIC, and processes were carried out through intimidation rather than consent.
In 2023, several Indigenous Peoples were summoned by police after protesting the project, which communities viewed as criminalization and intimidation. In 2025, thousands of Indigenous Peoples across Flores again mobilized to reject the geothermal expansion and demanded the cancellation of the Regent’s Decree approving the project location, saying it was issued without transparency or community consent.
Indigenous women have been at the center of this resistance because their land is directly connected to food, water, medicine, and cultural survival. When land is taken, women lose both livelihood security and cultural protection, while also facing violence from security forces and patriarchal structures. Standing on the front lines to defend their ancestral territories, these women have faced severe crackdowns, including violence, criminalization, and intimidation from joint security forces
Nickel Mining and the Survival of the O’Hongana Manyawa
In North Maluku, the O’Hongana Manyawa Indigenous Peoples face severe threats from nickel mining. Indonesia’s nickel industry is central to the global electric vehicle supply chain, but this “green mineral”economy is destroying forests and rivers in Indigenous territories. In East Halmahera alone, there are at least 29 mining permits covering more than 186,000 hectares, many of which overlap with Indigenous Peoples’ territories. Forest destruction and river pollution have reduced the living space of the O’Hongana Manyawa, including those living in voluntary isolation who are highly vulnerable to disease, forced contact, and displacement.
Criminalization has also followed resistance. Six leaders from the O’Hongana Manyawa community were prosecuted after defending their ancestral forests against mining expansion. Four of them were sentenced to life imprisonment, while two others were sentenced to 20 years in prison. The criminalization of Indigenous Peoples reflects a broader reality where protecting forests is treated as a crime, even as mining companies operate with state support.
For the O’Hongana Manyawa community in Halmahera, the nickel mining boom is not development, but a threat to their survival. The destruction of their forests brings criminalization and loss of food systems, rivers, medicinal plants, and entire cultural identity.
Toraja Communities Confront Geothermal Development
In Toraja, South Sulawesi, geothermal development is already facing serious concerns. The planned 12,979-hectare geothermal project threatens to affect one subdistrict and four Indigenous Peoples’ territories. These areas include sacred forests, burial grounds, agricultural land, and water sources that are central to both spiritual practice and daily life.
For communities in Toraja, the issue is not only environmental damage but also the protection of ancestral identity and customary governance. Toraja shows that a just transition must begin before extraction starts, not only after communities are displaced.
Hululais Geothermal Project and Environmental Impacts
In Hululais, Bengkulu, geothermal development by PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PT PGE) has created serious impacts on Indigenous Peoples. The project is located within the Bukit Daun protected forest, close to community settlements, farmland, and customary areas that people depend on for their livelihoods.
During exploration in 2018, drilling activities caused landslides that led to deaths and damaged fishponds, rice fields, and plantations. Water catchment areas were also damaged, reducing river water flow and contaminating drinking water sources for nearby villages. Communities reported land shifts and hot steam coming from the ground, which dried and burned crops in their gardens. At least six villages with more than 5,500 people are affected, showing that geothermal projects can bring serious environmental and social harm when Indigenous rights are ignored.
Lambo Dam and the Criminalization of Indigenous Resistance
Hydro power projects in Rendu reflect the same pattern of injustice. The planned Lambo Dam threatens the customary territories of the Rendu, Ndora, and Lambo Indigenous Peoples, where rivers are central to farming systems, food security, and spiritual life. Communities fear losing agricultural land, water sources, sacred sites, and ancestral territory that sustain both livelihoods and cultural identity.
Criminalization and violence have accompanied resistance to the project. In 2021, Indigenous women reported violence, intimidation, sexual harassment, and forced entry into customary land by police, Brimob, TNI, and local authorities who escorted survey teams for the dam project. In 2022, police forcibly arrested 24 Indigenous Peoples from Rendu, 23 men and one woman, after they blocked activities linked to the dam project, and community members reported being beaten during the arrests. These actions show how hydropower projects are often enforced through repression rather than dialogue.
What a Rights-Based Just Transition Looks Like
These cases reveal that the core issue lies not in renewable energy itself, but in the coercive and exclusionary ways these projects are planned and executed. A truly just transition must center human rights and prioritize people over unregulated sustainability goals.
Indigenous Peoples must be able to exercise freely without threat, intimidation, and harassment their right to decide on activities affecting their ancestral lands. In this context, FPIC must be upheld as a substantive human right rather than a mere procedural formality—ignoring the views, concerns, and collective decision of affected indigenous communities. Further, the use of discriminatory laws to criminalize Indigenous Peoples must end. We call for targeted protection mechanisms for Indigenous Women against violence, harassment, and systemic marginalization.
Most importantly, Indonesia must pass a strong Indigenous Peoples Law that explicitly recognizes Indigenous territories, collective rights, and traditional governance systems. Without robust legal recognition and protection and proper enforcement, the green transition risks becoming another form of exploitation under a new label.
Indonesia’s geothermal, nickel, and hydropower wealth must not be used to drive “green colonialism”. To prevent this, a truly just transition must be firmly grounded in:
- Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights and Free, Prior, and Informed Consent: Securing formal, legal recognition for Indigenous territories along with the proper implementation of FPIC to prevent displacement and land grabbing.
- Protection of Indigenous Women: Shielding Indigenous women from the disproportionate social, cultural, and economic impacts of unchecked extractive projects.
- Respect and protection of Indigenous governance: Ensuring Indigenous communities hold the power to collectively decide the use of their lands, territories, and resources, and to their own future and development pathways based on their indigenous governance systems, culture, and ways of life.
Key Facts
- Indonesia holds approximately 40% of the world’s geothermal energy potential.
- Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of nickel.
- More than 186,000 hectares in East Halmahera are covered by mining permits.
- At least 5,500 people are affected by geothermal development in Hululais.
- Indigenous communities across Indonesia report criminalization, land dispossession and lack of FPIC linked to energy transition projects.
