Intersecting Inequalities and the Limits of Post-Mining Transition in East Kalimantan

This report examines the livelihoods, resource access, and intersecting inequalities for women and marginalised groups, through a case study of Kerta Buana, a transmigrant village in Tenggarong Seberang sub-district, Kutai Kartanegara regency, East Kalimantan, as local communities perceive and experience coal mine closure as a sudden rupture to the local economy. East Kalimantan is Indonesia’s largest coal-producing region. Kerta Buana village was established in 1980 as a transmigrant settlement and developed a thriving agricultural economy. By the mid-2000s, large-scale open-pit mining had displaced 70–80% of its agricultural land, destroyed its primary water sources, and restructured its entire social and economic life around coal. In February 2022, a major mining company operating in the area formally ceased operations, initiating what is officially framed as a post-mining recovery phase. Among coal-affected communities in East Kalimantan, Kerta Buana stands out as a particularly legible site for examining what post-mining transition actually looks like on the ground: it combines sudden corporate closure, a diverse community composition (including transmigrant groups and women in the informal sector) and the layered, intersecting inequalities that shape who bears transition costs. The analysis draws on four theoretical traditions: feminist political economy, feminist political ecology, intersectionality, and decolonial and postcolonial scholarship, organised around four interrelated dimensions of justice: redistribution, recognition, representation, and reparation. These are used as an analytical device to discuss the findings, not a claim to exhaust what justice requires.