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“You can still see the marks. It left all this damage, made things rot and fall apart,” reflects Arif Pujianto, a long-time resident of a house located just 50 meters from the shore. His home, once a haven, now succumbs to flooding at least twice a year.
Standing outside his single-storey home, with its large tiled awning, Pujianto reminisces about his childhood on the island. He has witnessed firsthand the unsettling changes that have occurred over the past decade.
“This is my island,” he states, with a mix of pride and sorrow. For generations, life here was stable, but the once serene environment has dramatically transformed.
The place I’ve lived since I was a child, the place both my parents are buried.
“I really hope it doesn’t. That’s why I filed this lawsuit.”
Demanding compensation
Rising tides have damaged homes, warming waters have ruined once-lucrative seaweed farms, and rapidly changing weather patterns have made fishing largely unprofitable.
The plaintiffs are seeking about $6,800 each, arguing Holcim is responsible for 0.42 per cent of all global emissions since 1950 and should therefore pay for the same proportion of the damage caused to Pari Island (equivalent to $27,200 of a total $6,476,190 in emissions-related damage).
Ibu Asmania and her husband Sartono run a small seaweed farm off the coast of Pari Island. But rising tea temperatures are bleaching their crops. Credit: SBS News / Claudia Farhart
“What we’re demanding first is for Holcim to cut its emissions, and secondly, to repair the environmental damage on Pari Island, through restoration, disaster mitigation, mangrove replanting and building wave barriers,” Asmania says.
“It would mean our sea could recover, the fish could come back, and the whole ecosystem could heal again.”
An ecosystem in turmoil
“At first, we thought the seaweed had some kind of disease. It starts turning white from the tips, then the whole branch turns white, decays and rots. And then it spreads to the other seaweed nearby, one by one, until everything gets damaged,” she explains.
But later we learned that it’s actually because of climate change. It’s because of the increasing sea temperature.
“We could still predict the seasons back then, including the wind directions month to month,” he tells SBS News.
Bang Bobby has been fishing the waters off Pari Island since he was 10 years old. He says changing weather patterns are driving fish away from the island. Credit: SBS News / Claudia Farhart
“During the easterly winds around August, we’d catch tuna mackerel and scads. Then, as the seasons shifted to westerlies around March or April, we’d catch Spanish mackerel, baby tuna, and lots of others.
Bobby says fish populations near the island have declined, which means local fishers need to travel much further out to sea to find their daily catch.
Imagine a big basin filled with water. If you drop even a small stone into it, it still creates ripples and waves that reach everywhere. It’s the same with emissions.
Bang Bobby
“Imagine a big basin filled with water. If you drop even a small stone into it, it still creates ripples and waves that reach everywhere. It’s the same with emissions. You can’t see them with your eyes, but their impact is real and we can feel it.”
Landmark legal battle
A Peruvian farmer spent the better part of a decade trying to launch a lawsuit against German energy giant RWE, arguing its carbon emissions contributed to glacial flooding in his hometown, but a German court rejected his case in May.
The Pari Island plaintiffs travelled to Switzerland in September to make their case with a local court in the town of Zug, where Holcim is headquartered. They’re now awaiting the court’s decision on whether to consider their complaint.
Pari Island man Edi Mulyono says he is taking Holcim to court to protect his children’s futures. Credit: SBS News / Claudia Farhart
In a statement to SBS News, a Holcim spokesperson said: “In our opinion, the question of who is allowed to emit how much CO2 is a matter for the legislature and not a question for a civil court.”
“We await the court’s decision, yet regardless of the outcome, Holcim is fully committed to reaching net zero by 2050.”
