Abdul Kadir looked out to sea as a gathering of storm clouds darkened the outlook for the day’s fishing in Balikpapan Bay.
“We’re often faced with this situation,” Kadir told Mongabay Indonesia. “But we survive as best we can.”
Like many fishers here in Jenebora village, Kadir’s one-ton boat is too small to venture out beyond Balikpapan Bay to fish in the deeper waters of the Makassar Strait, which separates the eastern coast of Borneo here and the western part of Sulawesi Island.
Founded in 1935, Jenebora today is a diverse village of ethnic Bajau and Bugis people, as well as Javanese migrants and Indigenous Dayak Pesisir families. Most of the village’s nearly 3,500 residents rely on fishing from small boats in Balikpapan Bay, a deep inlet puncturing the island of Borneo just south of the city of Balikpapan.
In the past, a fishing boat sailing out into the bay from Jenebora could haul up to 40 kilograms (about 90 pounds) of fish and shrimp in just one day, earning up to 6 million rupiah (US$380) when prices were high.
“There’s been a decline in catches, and price,” Kadir said.
Fishers here say they began to feel a slowdown in the bay beginning in the mid-1990s, after a retinue of coal and timber companies started operating in the bay area. The 2012 construction of the Kariangau Industrial Estate across from Jenebora village worsened matters.
In 2018, a cracked pipeline owned by state oil company Pertamina led to an explosion, killing five people and spilling oil across 200 square kilometres (77 square miles) in the bay.
Today, however, people in Jenebora worry Indonesia’s largest construction site yet, a vast new city to serve as the nation’s capital, could sink the fishing economy that has sustained families for generations in the bay area.
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Ultimately if this is left to continue, it will foster an ecological disaster that can’t be avoided in the future. The surrounding ecosystem will slowly die. These seagrass beds are also home to dugongs.
Mappaselle, executive director, Pokja Pesisir
Capital formation
In 2019, Indonesia’s then-President Joko Widodo announced plans to move the capital of the world’s fourth most-populous country to a greenfield site on the east coast of Borneo, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) from Jakarta.
The shift aspired to alleviate the congestion of Jakarta, which has a population of around 30 million in the greater metropolitan area, while also transferring some political and economic focus away from the traditionally dominant Java Island.
Delays and slow investment continue to hinder progress in the former president’s vision, fueling doubts about the project’s feasibility. Regardless of the slow start, port traffic in Balikpapan Bay has surged to support the early construction work.
“There are more and more ships passing through Balikpapan Bay now,” Kadir said.
Jenebora fishers say commercial ships anchoring in fishing grounds have squeezed local catches. Moreover, some prime fishing areas are now off-limits to the village because they were zoned as part of the capital development or the industrial estate.
Previous field reporting by Mongabay showed that PT Putra Demang Mentawir had nailed a sign with its name and a legal contact number onto a mangrove tree trunk. Meanwhile, mangroves have been cleared in areas like the Kariangau Industrial Estate by PT Mitra Murni Perkasa (MMP) for the development of a nickel processing plant.
Kadir said he anticipated these new problems when he saw a draft of the 2021 zoning plan for East Kalimantan, the province where Balikpapan City and Jenebora Village are situated. Three years later, the Jenebora fishers say they have yet to receive a response to their concerns that the bay where they catch fish has been recategorised as a port zone.
The 2022 law that serves as the legal basis for the new capital city included an appendix specifying Semayang Port for international passenger routes, and the Kariangau terminal for container shipping.
Muhammad Abduh, chair of a local association of fishers in Jenebora, said fish and shrimp catches in Balikpapan Bay area have decreased year on year. This trend has prompted many to leave the village in search of a new livelihood.
“If we remain here it will for sure be difficult to find fish when we’re faced with all these tankers,” he said.
Abduh said improved communication with contractors and commercial operators in the area could bring improvements, but added the companies didn’t appear to concern themselves with the welfare of local fishers.
“To date we haven’t found a solution,” he said.
Human capital
The clearing of mangrove forests by developers in Balikpapan Bay has already disrupted the marine ecosystem, depriving marine life of the crucial feeding and spawning grounds that the trees had provided.
Mappaselle, executive director of Pokja Pesisir, a conservation nonprofit based in East Kalimantan province, said the accounts of fishers in the Balikpapan Bay area reflected an array of environmental factors that reinforced one another.
“Everything is connected,” Mappaselle said. “It will eventually affect the fish or shrimp around Balikpapan Bay.”
The Kariangau Industrial Estate today is a prominent industrial and logistics hub of more than 20 factories spread across 3,500 hectares (8,650 acres) on the fringes of the bay.
Increased sedimentation as a result of this land-use change will contribute to greater sedimentation in the water, with the increased turbidity blocking out the sun and preventing seagrasses from photosynthesising.
“When that happens, the surrounding ecosystem will slowly die,” Mappaselle said. “These seagrass beds are also home to dugongs.”
One aggravating factor is the lack of major river mouths in Balikpapan Bay, limiting the movement of water in the bay out into the Makassar Strait dividing Borneo and Sulawesi islands.
The sediment and waste accumulate in the bay, trapped by the to and fro of the tides, with no natural outlet.
“Ultimately if this is left to continue, it will foster an ecological disaster that can’t be avoided in the future,” Mappaselle said.
Data from Indonesia’s statistics agency, which conducts the national census, showed there were 4,126 fishing families in four villages in the bay: Maridan, Mentawir, Pamaluan and Pantai Lango.
“We’re still trying to ensure that fishermen can get space to catch seafood,” Mappaselle said.
A field report at the new capital, named Nusantara, in September documented new port construction along the 16,000-hectare (39,500-acre) network of mangrove forests that stretches from the mouth of the Mahakam River along the Balikpapan Bay area.
“I observed numerous logistics ports being constructed for [the transportation of] materials like sand and rock,” Tri Atmoko, a primatologist with Indonesia’s national research agency, told Mongabay for this September report.
“Mangrove areas, which were previously intact, are being cleared to build these ports,” Tri said.
Capital punishment
Imam Syafi’i, a researcher at Indonesia’s national research agency, said urban planners had marketed Indonesia’s new capital as a “forest city,” but that this largely neglects the outlying marine environment, which could soon cease to function as a fishing area.
“The conception of [Nusantara as a] Forest City excludes Balikpapan Bay from the green development plans,” Imam said in a recent presentation.
The national capital authority said the existing mangroves in the Balikpapan Bay area would be zoned a protected area.
Sodikin, a civil servant overseeing public welfare in North Penajam Paser district, which shares the bay with Balikpapan, acknowledged the hardship faced by the district’s fishers, as well as the complex reality of a development on the scale of Nusantara.
“How can you build a city without doing anything?” Sodikin said, adding that the government was doing its best to limit any deforestation of mangroves in North Penajam Paser district.
“If there is any clearing, then we will ask for compensation from the relevant parties,” he said.
Back in Balikpapan Bay, Abdul Kadir surveyed the storm clouds as he recounted his first experiences fishing while in elementary school. Back then, fishers didn’t have to worry about declining catches, port traffic or restrictions on where they could earn a living.
“Now, if I get 1 or 2 kilos,” he said, “I’m grateful.”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
