Putting community-centric justice into just transitions from the Global South: the case of Indonesia’s nickel sector

The aim of this paper is to deepen the understanding of justice in ‘just transitions’ with reference to the energy-extractives nexus in the Global South. The socio-environmental impacts of resource extraction in the Global South to support the low-carbon energy transition in the Global North represent a significant blind-spot in mainstream North-centric climate mitigation frameworks and discourses of just transition. Scholarship on environmental justice (EJ) offers a conceptual entry into this terrain, helping to unpack the unequal spatial distribution of hazards created by the boom in critical minerals required for ‘clean energy’ initiatives. We first illustrate this problem using the concepts of distributive and procedural (in)justices and empirical work on Indonesia’s nickel extraction and processing sectors which are growing to feed a corresponding global rise in electric vehicles. Secondly, we draw on fieldwork with communities in Morowali and Weda Bay region of Indonesia to examine ways communities negotiate justice and adapt to live under extractivism. We propose a justice concept that is centred on the lived experiences of communities, that goes beyond the binary frameworks of ‘community resistance versus compliance’ in the EJ literature.