ECOCIDE IN WEST PAPUA

Mapping the environmental destruction from mining and conflict in West Papua

Between 2014 and 2016, INTERPRT documented environmental destruction and conflict around mining, oil palm and land grabbing in West Papua. The investigation we initiated on Grasberg, for the first time, reconstructed the full extent of how mine waste had smothered the forest and estuary areas in Mimika using satellite imagery analysis. Grasberg, operated by Freeport McMoran, is one of the world’s largest copper and gold mines that cuts through the ancestral land of the Amungme and Kamoro people of West Papua. For decades pollution from mining has devastated one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. West Papua is also a disputed territory. Widespread social and political repression by the Indonesian government is underwritten by everyday brute violence against civilians including torture, extrajudicial killings and other forms of persecution.

We documented the gradual destruction of rainforest, mangroves, rivers and coastal waters between 1987 and 2014 from industrial mining in the Timika region of West Papua using satellite image time series, NDVI analysis and custom algorithms (led by our collaborators Mike Alonzo with Jamon Van Den Hoek) to “see through clouds”.  The analysis revealed 138 square kilometers of forest loss and was corroborated by publicly available corporate and environmental data. In 2016, INTERPRT was able to carry out ground truth observation in West Papua, which is off limits for international journalists.

Our investigation on Grasberg was included in a joint appeal on various dimensions of violations caused by Freeport in West Papua submitted to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights of the OHCHR and has been widely cited by West Papuan and international activists and civil society organizations fighting for the rights of West Papuans.