Indonesia to Improve Working Conditions, Environmental Practices Before CMA Negotiations
Indonesia and the U.S. pledged together to take concrete steps to advance "occupational safety and health and fair wages and ensure employers uphold internationally recognized labor standards and comply with domestic labor law" in Indonesia's mines and processing facilities, as well as work to lower greenhouse gas emissions in their mineral supply chains, "including efforts to seek to promote clean and low-emission power for mineral processing."
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Non-governmental organizations and some senators have said Indonesia doesn't deserve to negotiate a critical minerals agreement with the U.S. because of poor working conditions and because nickel processing in that country is done with energy from coal plants, which makes it dirtier than nickel processed in Canada, the U.S. or Australia.
"To advance this work, they [the U.S. and Indonesia] commit to develop a critical minerals action plan that encompasses all of these lines of effort and seeks to increase high standard investment in the critical minerals sectors in both countries. They commit to pursue these efforts with a view toward establishing the foundation to launch future negotiations on a critical minerals agreement," the two countries said in a joint statement after President Joe Biden and Indonesian President Joko Widodo met Nov. 13.
The U.S. Department of Energy will work with Indonesia's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources to identify alternatives to coal-powered industrial growth, they said.
They also said that Indonesia and the U.S. should work broadly to boost trade between them, not just in the critical minerals sector, and they agreed that unions and decent work should be promoted.
"They commit to work together to reduce supply chain dependencies and vulnerabilities, promote supply chain transparency, and expand access to secure and sustainable critical minerals sources. They affirm the importance of strong worker and environmental protections to prevent exploitation and promote sustainability in the international mining sector," the leaders said.