But Wallacea’s environment is rich in more than wildlife. Logging, clearance for agriculture and, more recently, the growth of palm-oil plantations have seen huge areas of forest chopped down since the middle of the 20th century.
Most of the world’s nickel, including that mined in Indonesia, comes from laterite ores. These, in turn, come in two sorts, limonite and saprolite. Saprolite, which contains higher concentrations of nickel, is well-suited for processing in a device known as a rotary kiln electric furnace . This melts the ore at more than 1,500°C, producing a compound of nickel and iron called nickel pig iron , much of which is in turn used to produce stainless steel.
The more fundamental problem is that much of Indonesia’s saprolite has already been dug up and exported, mostly to China. In 2020 Indonesia imposed an export ban on what is left. But most of the country’s remaining nickel is locked up in deposits of limonite, which are not suitable for theFor decades, mining firms have experimented with an alternative called high pressure acid leaching .