Kendeng Hills

The Kendeng range runs across northern Central and East Java and is built of limestone. That rock dissolves in slightly acid rainwater, so cavities, caves and underground rivers form within it, and rain falling on the ridge does not run off at the surface but enters and reappears as springs at the foot.

Those springs water the rice fields below. The arrangement means that what happens on the ridge determines what is available at the foot, and that the connection between them is invisible from the surface. This technical point needs stating first, because without it the matter described below reads as a conflict between development and belief, when what is at issue is hydrology.

Since 2006 plans for cement works and limestone quarrying in Kendeng have been opposed by part of the population, above all the Sedulur Sikep and the farmers at the foot of the hills, on the ground that quarrying would destroy that water-holding structure. The opposition has proceeded through the courts, through refusal to sign, and through the best-known act: the encasing of feet in cement before the State Palace in 2016 and 2017.

The case has run back and forth. The Supreme Court annulled an environmental permit in 2016 on judicial review; a new permit was issued afterwards; a strategic environmental assessment was carried out on the President's instruction; and the dispute continues. This encyclopedia records the matter in the place entry and in the entry of the figure whose teaching the objectors invoke, and records that it was unresolved when this was written.