High Resolution Satellite Imagery for Monitoring Environmental and Climate Induced Change in Isolated Rural Communities

Space-based imagery now provides the GIS professional with the ability to monitor isolated regions and minority groups at risk of environmental exploitation and human rights abuse. Increased economic globalization and climate change pressure will likely increase the frequency and intensity of regional ethnic and resource motivated conflict. Although the use of high resolution satellite imagery for monitoring human rights abuse was proposed even before the conflict in the former Yugoslavian state of Bosnia, only in the last decade has satellite imagery of sufficiently high resolution become available for mainstream human rights applications. Operators such as GeoEye have provided metric earth observation and analysis with satellites such as IKONOS 2, which travels in a roughly 423km altitude polar orbit around the earth.

I was invited by Survival International, a human rights organization focused primarily on indigenous groups around the globe, to look closely at the Grasberg mine complex in Irian Jaya (West Papua). This request followed previous studies I had been involved with in southern Sudan and Zimbabwe (1-2). We applied to the GeoEye Foundation for satellite imagery data covering this region.

The intention of this particular human rights study was to monitor mining corporation activities in these poorly documented regions. Very few maps and data are available for these areas due to their inherent inaccessibility. It should be noted that severe passive opposition (such as placarded marches, public awareness, use of national and international media, etc.) and active opposition (including deliberately damaging equipment, damaging fuel lines, etc.) near the Grasberg mine has resulted in concerted media interest world-wide. Access to this region is significantly restricted. The recent deaths of two U.S. journalists and the West Papuan leader, Kelly Kwalik, close to the mine in late December 2009 only served to heighten existing tensions in the Irian Jaya region. Kwalik had advocated passive resistance to the occupation of tribal homelands by Indonesian military forces.

A key challenge for confirming human rights abuse allegations is a rapid response to the claims and reports, which often lack precise locations on the ground. Effective and timely response by the international media and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is hindered by not knowing the size of affected areas, or distribution of numbers of people affected. Furthermore, there is often unwillingness by the local governments to permit access to foreign press members who might verify poor living conditions or provide humanitarian relief to potential "enemies of the state." These fears create a xenophobic response to outside influences. This is evidenced by the rapid response of the international community in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which was sadly short-circuited to a great extent by the reticence of the Burmese authorities to receive aid.

There has been considerable concern about the indigenous Amungme and Komoro tribes, with the expansive growth in the Grasberg mine. This mine is operated by Rio Tinto (a U.S. registered company) as a 40% joint venture partnership with Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold (FCX) run in partnership with the Indonesian Government. PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) is a subsidiary of the U.S. company, Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold Inc. Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold Inc. is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and PTFI is listed on the Jakarta Stock Exchange. This mine is the largest gold mine in the world and the third largest copper mine - a significant factor in the Indonesian economic sector.

A relatively recent (2006) and comprehensive report (3) by WAHLI - the Indonesian Forum for Environment, the environmental watchdog of Indonesia - stated significant concerns over Rio Tinto's continued failure to address human rights and workers' rights, as well as shortcomings in environmental protection. The report listed the following: legal breaches, copper wastage and pollution, engineering inadequacies, vegetation smothering, tailings toxicity, estuary habitat destruction, contamination of estuary food chain and ecological disruption.

WALHI's recommendations were very forthright. It recommended that the government immediately enforce national environmental law by halting Freeport-Rio Tinto operations until breaches were remedied, undertake its own thorough and regular sampling, re-examine tax and royalty arrangements, and establish an independent panel to define various issues including processing and waste management. Local communities protesting against environmental and cultural damage by the mine's expansion and operations have been subject to a range of measures including harassment, torture and even murder. It is on such grounds that the Norwegian Pension Fund finally disinvested from Rio Tinto in 2008. For the Amungme and Komoro tribes, the reduction of the once magnificent Mt. Grasberg, one of the largest peaks of the Sudirman range of West Papua, to an intensely excavated plateau has been quite devastating. Tribes were forcefully relocated, leaving thousands of indigenous people removed from their traditional farming and food gathering territories. Moving Amungme to the more tropical lowlands brought people without natural malarial immunity into contact with malaria carrying mosquitoes, which has led to an increase in mortality rates.

The vast Grasberg copper and gold mine (figure 1), at over 2.6M hectares, was first prospected thoroughly by Dutch geologists in the 1930s. It comprises several delicate ecosystems - alpine meadow, wetland and mangrove forest - which make this environmental site world-renowned for its range and diversity of flora and fauna. The mine is seen at the left with glaciers at the right. The accelerated rate of mine and infrastructure development and consequential environmental destruction are set against a backdrop of rising tension. The strong indigenous desire for West Papuan independence, which began during the Indonesian occupation in the1960s, places Grasberg's Freeport mine as a strong contender for the worst case of environmental and human rights abuse of any mining project currently underway in the world.

Figure 1. (Click for larger view.)

Damage to the environment caused by the mine has impaired the ability of thousands of Amungme and Komoro tribesmen, traditional owners of the mine site and river areas, to access food and clean water, and to maintain their own unique cultural practices. Each day the mine dumps over 230,000 tons of waste into the Ajikwa River (4), resulting in increased sediment transport, which has deoxygenated the river, killing plants and fish alike. Rapid development of the land and river systems to the south of the mine have led to rapid deforestation between 2000 and 2002 (figures 2a [2002] and 2b [2000] and figures 3a [2002] and 3b [2000]). The land cleared on the right of the river is about 7190 square yards, with bridges and man-made lakes created (365, 294, 102 and 69 square yard areas approximately, respectively). New square building plots, displacing what was recently pristine forest, are visible at about 16 yards by 16 yards dimensions. Some buildings have also been partially removed during this period. This land clearance, sadly, is not an isolated case but is now a major problem, as documented in recent ESA satellite projects. ERS-1-SAR (synthetic aperture radar) data have been used to monitor rain forest "conversion" and land use planning. The ESA pilot project TRULI, located on the island of Borneo, 450 km upstream of the Mahakam River, sets a benchmark for monitoring Indonesian tropical rain forest removal.

Figure 2a. (Click for larger view.)

Figure 2b. (Click for larger view.)

Figure 3a. (Click for larger view.)

Figure 3b. (Click for larger view.)

Thousands of tons of waste rock are also dumped by lorry into nearby alpine valleys where high tropical rainfall (often leaving the mountains hidden in thick mist) and erosion lead to fine materials moving downstream, releasing further heavy metals such as mercury, cadmium and copper into the local river networks. This contamination is toxic to aquatic organisms and offers the threat of concentration in the food chain.

The mine complex itself, highlighted with Brava Reader, stands at approximately 15,099,000 square yards, with the obvious bored out circular core of the mine (Tambang Terbuka) standing at 2,213,000 square yards. The level of detail allows for the monitoring of individual trucks (8 yd x 16 yd- width x length) and the ability to differentiate the operations of different types of mine machinery (figure 4). A large unstable rock mass on the edge of the north side of the mine resulted in a land fall prior to 2002, the collapse covering an area of over 770,000 square yards (figure 5).

Figure 4. (Click for larger view.)

Figure 5. (Click for larger view.)

Nearby alpine glaciers, which are among the closest to equator in the southern hemisphere (almost exactly latitude -4 degrees south and longitude 137 degrees east), are considered sensitive markers of climate change. They have exhibited area change between June 2000 and June 2002, although the Mount Jaya glacier region has been in documented retreat since the mid-nineteenth century.

Imagery from the GeoEye Foundation covered the period June 2000 to June 2002. Shuttle imagery (NASA earth observatory imagery) from June 2005 allowed accurate determination of glacial area cover over a five-year period for the first time. A number of different imaging packages were used, but Brava viewer proved to be a very useful tool, with the imagery coming in a tiff format. The existing known feature sizes on underlying terrain made measuring areas relatively straightforward using viewer polygonal area image measurement techniques (figure 6).

Figure 6. (Click for larger view.)

The remnants of the East Northwall Firn and Carstenz glaciers changed over the study period (figure 7a June 2000, figure 7b June 2002), which have been tabulated in Table 1 along with other glacier regions in the vicinity of Grasberg, including some recovery of ice cover by June 2005.

Figure 7a. (Click for larger view.)

Figure 7b. (Click for larger view.)

Table 1. * Undetermined. Area of each region in square yards. (Click for larger view.)

The overall area of the snowfield regions shows a very significant reduction between 2000 and 2002, particularly for the larger areas of East Northwall Firn and Carstenz, -34.9% and -55.8% respectively, followed by an increase of 24.9% and 79.5% respectively between 2002 and 2005, although the resolution of the 2005 imagery is poorer than the IKONOS imagery. Nonetheless, the overall trend for both these and the other respective regions over the study period of 2000 and 2002 is down (-17.8% and -20.6% decrease for East Northwall Firn and Carstenz respectively). The overall area of the glacial ice shows a small change in ice cover between 2000 and 2002, more noticeable in the smaller ice/snowfield regions, which are less able to cope with temperature induced changes. The smaller ice fields show a small decrease in area, while the larger areas show a slight increase. East Northwall Firn increased by 4.6% while Carstenz increased by 9%. The snow cover is clearly misleading in terms of considering the glacial extent. It is not possible to distinguish snow cover from ice cover in the NASA imagery or to confirm some of the smaller regions in either the 2000 or 2002 imagery. It is likely that these smaller regions have melted, as did the larger Meren glacier in the period 1970-1990. Clearly data should be acquired over a much longer period of study to look at the consistency in longer term reduction in the glacial cover in this region.

In summary, high resolution commercial satellite imagery is now able to provide detailed pictorial evidence to support claims made in disputed territories, isolated mining areas and within indigenous tribal lands. Our work has observed land use change driven by human activity in transforming tropical rain forest into housing and infrastructural development of forest clearances for mine support areas, and to map the extent of mine workings. We have also documented changes in glaciation of the Irian Jaya region of West Papua between 2000 and 2005, and the overall reduction in glacial cover during this period, consistent with the known long-term retreat in glacier cover since the 1850s. The impact of man on increasing the climate warming parameters may still be subject to some debate, but the impact of man on the environment even in this isolated part of the globe is clearly evidenced.

Author's note: I would like to thank the GeoEye Foundation for its support and for making these data available for this West Papuan study, which can be viewed at the GeoEye Foundation website (5).

References
1. Further applications of satellite imagery to monitor the effects of mining on indigenous peoples, and human rights abuse on vulnerable people groups Proceedings of the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Conference, September 2009 Leicester, England.
2. GeoEye Porta Farm Zimbabwe
3. The Environmental Impacts of Freeport-Rio Tinto Copper and Gold Mining Operation in Papua published by WALHI- Indonesian Forum for Environment Jakarta, 2006
4. mines and communities organization (minesandcommunities.org)
5. GeoEye High-Resolution Satellite Observation of Remote Mining Areas Addresses Human Rights and Environmental Protection Issues