Beautiful Linomoyo facing an Ecological Disaster

Linomoyo village is located in South East Sulawesi on a plain, surrounded on three sides by culturally significant mountains rising to over 1000m and covered in rainforest, and on the fourth side by a very large and beautiful wetland system. The rivers are fished by locals to support their livelihood, and are essential as a source of fresh, clean water to many communities in the area. The plain is home to the Cervus Timorensis deer, and dry rice fields combined with the fish provide most of the local diet. Within the wetland system snake kilometres of sheer white limestone cliffs, topped with rainforest.

Plans are about to be approved, with land already allocated by the provincial government, for 800ha of those mountains to be mined for limestone by a Chinese cement company.  This will cause major impacts on:

• the local ecosystem on which the Sulawesi Serpent eagle and many other as yet unrecorded species rely for their survival
• a local cave, not yet fully investigated, containing humanoid fossils rumoured to be of pre-historical origin
• the local community’s health and prosperity. This is a serious and immediate threat, with the company wanting to introduce the plans to the community in early August. 

At an obligatory meeting with Linomoyo villagers the mining company will show the area they wish to mine, and make promises of the benefits villagers can expect to receive: a regular wage, an end to traditional reliance on seasonal fishing, and money for the village to prosper. As is known from past experience, the water supply and food sources become contaminated, the wage of a mine labourer will not equal that of a sustainable fisherman and corporate social responsibility payments usually bypass local communities, going straight to the provincial government. These companies take advantage of the uneducated villagers by presenting them with a rosy picture that will not eventuate, and the project will dispossess them of their rights to a healthy and sustainable way of life.

We can see the impacts that a similar project has had on a small community in nearby Tabunggaya village where the fertile red soil, once community gardens interspersed with forest that supported the people in their traditional way of life, contains nickel. Javanese and Chinese companies have been buying out the traditional owners, dispossessing them of their culture and way of life as well as their land. After nearly 10 years of mining, it is now a disaster region where the companies have no respect for the rights of those who still live there. The local primary school is located at the top of what is now a red dirt hill, with mining extending right up to the building’s foundations. Children have to go to school via the truck depot, past the men on their smoke break, all in a world of red dust. Once a traditional coastal fishing village, the sea is now red with pollution and fish stocks are toxic. The prime means of support for locals is now as low-paid mining labourers, very different from their previous healthy and sustainable way of traditional community life.

Not much can be done now for Tabunggaya, as the companies have the right to dig the peninsula into the sea. However, there is enormous potential to assist the people in Linomoyo in opposing a similar destruction of their world but we must begin now, before the mining has an impact. The NGO which I am working with in S.E Sulawesi, LePMIL, is committed to doing this work, by showing the community options by which they can maintain and improve their way of life and not be dependent on the mine. We hope to work with them to improve the sustainability of their fish stocks, improve their skills as woodworkers, and introduce safer earthquake housing. This will be a process of gradual education, resulting in what we hope will be the common opposition to the mine, due to being incompatible with the villagers’ way of life.

But we need your help! We can’t undertake a massive project like this without funding, and because the threat is imminent it will take too long to go through normal donor channels like AusAID.


If this story has resonated with you, if you feel that you would like to help protect the Linomoyo environment and community, please consider making a donation to Commonwealth Bank Account 'Linda Elizabeth McRae' 06 7102 10169361 (Hobart, Australia).  I will keep you updated on our work, and promise to use all funds responsibly and with integrity. 

If you do choose to make a donation, please send me an email at linda.mcrae7@gmail.com with the amount and your name.


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Thank you, on behalf of the Linomoyo people and ecosystem.