Event
'The Lungs of the World for Sale, Limited Stock!'
Event Date:
February 13, 2026 | 7:00 PM TO 9:01 PM WIB
An Indonesian Indigenous tribe is threatened by large-scale nickel exploitation.
Natural resource-rich countries like Brazil and Indonesia are often caught in a paradox: They possess immense ecological wealth, yet weak governance and limited transparency allow forests and Indigenous lands to be treated as economic assets rather than public goods.
Journalists—Academias Dialogues Episode 3 examines how this dynamic unfolds in two critical regions, the Brazilian Amazon and Halmahera, Indonesia.
In Indonesia, the discussion draws from "Halmahera Forest Guardians Displaced by the Nickel Industry," an investigative report by Pulitzer Center grantees Irfan Maulana and Achmad Rizki Muazam.
The report documents how nickel mining expansion threatens the food forests and survival of the O’Hongana Manyawa (Tobelo Dalam) community. The story also reveals how National Strategic Project policies are used to bypass environmental safeguards and accelerate land acquisition.
The session will also highlight key insights from the investigation "Financial Market and Farmers Keep Indigenous Communities out of Their Own Land in the Amazon Rainforest," by Rainforest Investigations Network Fellow Bruna Bronoski. It exposes how financial markets and agribusiness actors expand into protected and disputed Indigenous lands through complex investment mechanisms.
In both cases, Indigenous communities are systematically marginalized. Customary land rights are ignored, livelihoods are destroyed, and cultural heritage is eroded, even as these projects remain formally legal.
This public dialogue will bring together investigative journalists and academic expert Aidy Halimanjaya to connect field evidence with policy analysis. The discussion will explore how regulatory loopholes, financial systems, and power imbalances enable environmental destruction, and what must change to ensure transparency, accountability, and justice in resource governance.
Date: Friday, February 13, 2026
Time: 7:00pm-9:00pm WIB
Venue: Zoom Meeting and YouTube Live
Language: Indonesian and English with simultaneous interpretation
Register now in this link: Registration to Conversation Corner "The lungs of the world for sale, limited stock!"
Join the conversation and reflect on who truly benefits from the world’s natural wealth.
