How Not to Build a Power Plant: a Tale From Java Island

It’s a bucolic scene: a farmer rests on a path between shimmering rice paddies in the afternoon sun, his tanned face staring across the flooded fields to the gray expanse of the Java Sea.

But the farmer, Wari, isn’t happy, and the Indonesian postcard view belies a battle that has divided local communities, split families and become a wind-vane for the growth prospects of Southeast Asia’s largest economy. What Wari is looking at is the site of a planned coal-fired power station.