By Shin Young Chung, Senior Researcher of the ARC Center
Life in the city feels seamless. When it gets dark, a flick of a switch brings light. Turn on the tap, and clean water flows. Waste disappears from sight the moment a toilet is flushed, and garbage is collected once it is placed outside the home. Urban life can remain so clean and convenient because power plants and foul-smelling waste treatment facilities—constantly emitting dust and waste and burdening nearby residents—are located far away from cities. While urban residents enjoy the benefits of these facilities, the environmental risks are disproportionately borne by those who live near them.
The concentration of environmental risks and pollution burdens on particular places and particular groups is known as environmental injustice. As global supply chains have expanded, environmental injustice has also spread across borders. In some cases, such as the export of waste to poorer countries, these injustices are highly visible. More often, however, they are hidden within different stages of global supply chains. For example, production sites in Asia and Latin America may use toxic chemicals that are banned in importing countries or release industrial waste without proper treatment. Environmental injustice is therefore often concealed in places far removed from the sites of consumption.
Among the many manifestations of environmental injustice, places where residents suffer severe physical and mental health impacts and human rights violations as a result of living in heavily polluted environments are often referred to as sacrifice zones. Open-pit mines, smelters, oil refineries, chemical plants, coal-fired power stations, oil and gas extraction sites, steel mills, landfills, and hazardous waste incinerators are among the most polluting and dangerous facilities that result in sacrifice zones. The people who live in these areas are typically poor and socioeconomically marginalized, effectively sacrificing their health and well-being for the benefit of others. In recent years, such sacrifice zones have expanded under the banner of renewable energy development and climate action.
Indonesia’s nickel mining and smelting industry offers a striking example. As demand for nickel—a critical mineral for electric vehicle batteries—has surged, large mining operations and industrial processing complexes have rapidly expanded across Sulawesi and Maluku. Communities that once relied primarily on farming and fishing are now suffering serious harm from pollutants released by mines and industrial facilities. Open-pit mining has stripped forests and rendered agricultural land unusable. Mine waste discharged into coastal waters has devastated fisheries, depriving residents of a major source of livelihood. Meanwhile, coal-fired power plants built solely to supply energy to nickel smelters blanket surrounding communities in dust, contributing to widespread respiratory illnesses.
Residents living near nickel mines and industrial estates are also being exposed to heavy metals, while fish caught in nearby waters have been found to be contaminated. According to a report published in May by the U.S.-based organization Mighty Earth, urine samples collected from residents of Kabaena Island—where nickel mining began nineteen years ago—revealed extremely high levels of nickel and cadmium. Urinary nickel concentrations ranged from six to thirty times the median level found among Americans and were comparable to levels typically observed among nickel refinery workers. Urinary cadmium concentrations were approximately five times higher than the median level in the United States. Nickel, sulphate, cadmium, and lead concentrations in rivers and nearby coastal waters also exceeded safety standards by substantial margins. Heavy metal contamination was likewise detected in seafood, a staple food for island residents. In shellfish, nickel concentrations exceeded FAO/WHO safety guidelines by seventy times, while lead levels were twelve times higher, cadmium levels five times higher, and copper levels 2.6 times higher than recommended limits. These findings have direct implications for the health of island communities, particularly the Bajau people, whose diets depend heavily on seafood.
Governments and corporations have long been aware of these problems, yet meaningful action has not followed. According to the independent investigative outlet The Gecko Project, research published in 2020 had already shown elevated nickel and iron concentrations in waters surrounding Obi Island, home to one of Indonesia’s largest nickel industrial complexes, as well as heavy metal contamination in fish consumed by local communities. In 2022, Harita, the island’s largest nickel company, commissioned its own study. That study likewise found elevated levels of lead and cadmium in locally caught fish. However, when the report was publicly released, references to heavy metal contamination had been removed, while conclusions asserting that the fish were safe for consumption remained. Harita has since continued to use the report in its public communications and promotional materials.
While governments and corporations look the other way, pollutants do not remain confined to the sea or the land. They accumulate, slowly and steadily, in the bodies of the people who live there. The true frontline of environmental injustice—the sacrifice zone—is therefore not simply a place marked on a map. It is a human body.
In If Our Bodies Could Speak of the World (우리 몸이 세계라면), Professor Kim Seung-seop argues that social inequality and violence become inscribed on the body. Urban residents may feel that they are making a seamless transition to electric vehicles, but that transition is accompanied by the gradual accumulation of heavy metals in the bodies of people living on Kabaena and Obi Islands. The place of the sacrifice zone is not ultimately the mine or the smelter. It is their bodies.