This is the speech I delivered during the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Global Assembly 2025 in Jakarta, Indonesia, 17-21 February 2025. When I received the invitation couple months back, I realised that this event could be a platform for me to echo the elephant in the room: uncomfortable topics which many has been avoiding. So, based on that, I dediced to share my personal experience to ensure that this speech is the fruits and hopes of the long works and collaboration I’ve done, are doing and will be doing with many in the future.
The world’s race toward an energy transition, touted as a necessary path to combat climate change, comes at an unspoken cost. It’s a cost borne disproportionately by Indigenous Peoples like mine, whose lands hold the minerals powering this green revolution. From nickel to lithium, cobalt to rare earths, the materials essential for electric vehicles and renewable energy systems lie within our territories.
Yet, as global ambitions soar, our voices – the Indigenous Peoples and local communities – are drowned out, our rights ignored, and our ways of life crushed under the guise of progress.
Why Indigenous Peoples Must Be Central to the Transition
As an Indigenous rights defender with more than 20 years of experience working alongside affected communities, I see firsthand why centering Indigenous Peoples in this process is not just important but foundational.
The minerals being extracted are located on lands we have stewarded for generations.
These are not just territories; they are ancestral domains imbued with spiritual, cultural, and economic significance. Our connection to the land is not transactional; it is relational and reciprocal. When governments and corporations displace us or destroy these lands, they do more than disrupt our livelihoods—they unravel the very fabric of our existence.
Take, for example, the nickel mining operations in the eastern part of Indonesia where I came from. These mines supply raw materials for electric vehicle batteries—an industry marketed as green and sustainable. Yet, their development displaces Indigenous communities, pollutes rivers, and desecrates sacred sites. Indigenous communities, whom have lived sustainably off the land for centuries, are forced to abandon their way of life or face criminalisation for defending their rights. Meanwhile, international companies profit, their green credentials burnished by a supply chain riddled with human rights abuses.
The pattern repeats globally. In the lithium-rich Atacama Desert of Chile, Indigenous communities face water scarcity as mining operations deplete precious groundwater. In Kongo’s cobalt mines, child labor and dangerous working conditions underscore the human cost of this so-called transition.
Everywhere I look, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are being sidelined, repressed, and sacrificed—all for the minerals extracted from our domains.
Who Benefits from the Energy Transition?
And for what?
That’s the question we must confront: who is this energy transition truly for? Is it for the public interest, as its champions claim? Or is it for corporate profits, perpetuating the very extractivist model that brought us to this crisis? As it stands, the transition looks less like a solution and more like a continuation of the same exploitative practices dressed in green rhetoric.
This is the elephant in the room—one that too many policymakers and advocates avoid addressing.
The promise of a sustainable future rings hollow when it rests on the unsustainable exploitation of marginalised peoples. The energy transition, in its current form, seems to prioritize the needs of wealthy nations and corporations over the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Electric vehicles line the streets of cities in the Global North, their owners oblivious to the destruction wrought in the Global South to produce those cars. Solar panels and wind turbines dot suburban landscapes while the communities supplying their components bear the brunt of environmental and social harm.
This isn’t progress; it’s greenwashing.
A truly sustainable energy transition would center the rights and well-being of Indigenous Peoples. It would recognise that our knowledge systems, honed over millennia, offer solutions to environmental crises far more holistic and enduring than any technological fix.
It would uphold the principle of free, prior, and informed consent—including our rights to say NO— ensuring that no project proceeds without the genuine agreement of affected communities. And it would challenge the entrenched power dynamics that allow corporations to extract wealth from our lands while we are left to grapple with the consequences.
Elevating Indigenous Voices
But for this to happen, our voices must be elevated.
Indigenous Peoples are not monolithic, but our collective experiences share common threads: dispossession, resilience, and an unyielding commitment to protecting our lands. Elevating our voices means creating spaces where we can speak for ourselves, not be spoken for. It means respecting our leadership and listening to our solutions.
Too often, decisions about our territories are made in boardrooms and government offices far removed from the realities on the ground. This exclusion perpetuates harm and denies the world the wisdom we have to offer.
Yet even within our movements, representativeness is an issue we must confront. Indigenous Peoples are diverse, with different perspectives, priorities, and lived experiences. Too frequently, the same voices are elevated, while others—especially women, youth, uncontacted people, Indigenous with disability and those from less politically connected communities—are left unheard.
True representativeness requires intentional effort. It requires amplifying the voices of those most directly impacted by mining and ensuring that decision-making processes are inclusive and equitable.
When I work with communities displaced by mining, I see the toll it takes—not just materially but emotionally and spiritually. People lose not only their homes but their sense of identity.
Yet I also see extraordinary resilience. In Poco Leok of Flores Island, Indonesia, I see women leading protests, in Kasepuhan communities elders sharing knowledge, and in Sagea, Central Halmahera, youth envisioning alternative futures. These are the stories that need to be told. These are the people who need to be heard. The energy transition cannot be just if it silences those at its frontlines.
A Call for Justice and Equity
The stakes are high. Climate change is a pressing threat, but so is the continued violation of human rights and destruction of Indigenous territories.
These issues are interconnected, and addressing one at the expense of the other is not a solution. If we are to move forward, it must be in a way that respects the rights and dignity of all people, not just those who hold power. The energy transition must be a collective endeavor, rooted in justice and equity—not a new chapter in the same old story of exploitation.
As an Indigenous rights defender, I carry the weight of my community’s struggles and aspirations. I see the potential for a different path—one where our knowledge is valued, our rights are upheld, and our lands are protected.
However, this vision cannot be realized unless the world listens, truly listens, to the voices of Indigenous Peoples. Only then can we hope to achieve an energy transition that is not only green but just.
Share this content: