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OPINION By Fitrian Ardiansyah

Climate and sustainability specialist, a doctoral candidate at the Australian National University, and the recipient of Australian Leadership Award and Allison Sudradjat Award. ftrian.ardiansyah@anu.edu.au 

Indonesia’s decentralizedenvironmental governanceand the role of NGOs

For about more than a decade,

Indonesia has instituted

a wide-ranging political,

administrative and fiscal

decentralized government system. Some

people including prominent scholars,

however, have raised a critical question

whether such a system has delivered

better economic, social and environmental

development in Indonesia.

This is a challenging question to

answer.

A 2013 OECD report co-written by

Riyana Miranti and her team finds that

Indonesia has reduced absolute poverty

rates during the decentralization period.

The report, nevertheless, reveals that

inequality has risen – a wider social and

economic gap between the populations

 – and this could offset the exceptionaleconomic growth the country has achieved

in the same period.

Other scholars pointed out that, as

in the previous centralized system of

government, not only decentralization

has boosted economic growth but also

resulted in environmental degradation,

including deforestation, environmental

pollution, as well as conflicts between

local communities and resource

extraction enterprises.

A 2009 publication based on research

conducted by Matthew Hansen and his

team shows that although the rate of

deforestation slowed significantly in the

early 2000s, it has increased again since

2005. In fact, a recent study led by the

University of Maryland uncovers that

this rate has doubled to about two millionhectares per year compared to the period

of 2000-2003.

Another example of environmental

degradation is water pollution. The

Environment Ministry in its State of the

Environment Report 2012, for instance,

records an increase in the level of pollution

in major rivers – particularly in urban

areas – between 2008 and 2012.

At the same time, decentralization

has achieved what the previousgovernment system had failed to deliver,

which is greater public participation

and community involvement in a

development and public policy making

process across Indonesia.

As a massive archipelagic nation

stretching between the Indian and Pacific

oceans, and consisting of approximately

17,500 islands, 250 million people,

300 ethnic groups, and 700 languages,

facilitating and meeting the needs

of various communities is clearly a

herculean task.

Law No. 22 of 1999 on Regional

Governance as revised by Law No.

32 of 2004 especially stipulates that

rights, interest, aspiration and/or needs

of the public are acknowledged. Other

laws, including Law No. 26 of 2007on Spatial Planning and Law No. 32 of

2009 on Environmental Protection and

Management, also clearly recognized

such participation.

Furthermore, the 2009 Environmental

Law broadens its recognition by adding

other important rights, including right to a

healthy living environment, environmental

education, access to information,

participation, and access to justice.

This legal framework, coupled withthe fundamental change in the power

relationship between the central and

the sub-national governments, has

opened up a greater space for public

participation in decision making and

controlling the performance of the

authorities, as emphasized by Rasita

Purba of the University of Monash in her

2010 paper.

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OPINION

Not surprisingly, since decentralization

taking off, a multitude of non-

governmental organizations (NGOs) at

the national and local levels have since

been established. A senior lecturer from

University of Mataram in Lombok,

Addinul Yakin, argues that these NGOs

have used a range of activities, among

others, from public education, advocacy

and field environmental conservation.

To date, as explained in his paper,

NGOs, community and other interest

groups can directly send their petitions,

engage governments or corporations, and

request for them to take actions to reduce

environmental degradation and address

natural resource depletion.

If a proponent of a development

project or initiative fails to engage

communities or is perceived to bring

about negative environmental risks,

stakeholders and affected communities

may reject the initiative.

As a result, positive changes

in environmental management and

protection, albeit sporadically, have begun

to emerge.One of these few changes is a recent

local court’s ruling in Aceh in January 2014.

The Sumatran Orangutan Conservation

Programme reports that the court found a

palm oil company, PT Kallisata Alam, guilty

of illegally burning forests within the Tripa’s

peat swamps (as part of the protected fragile

Leuser Ecosystem).

As part of the court’s decision, the

company receives a fine of approximately

US$9 million to compensate the burningand US$21 million for restoration

activities of the affected forests.

This could be seen as a milestone

in environmental law. In the past,

environmental cases brought to the court

system have resulted in mix outcomes.

In many occasions, David Nicholson,

in his 2009 paper, explains that court

cases related to environmental damage

and pollution have legal and technical

complexities, making them difficult

to prove and leading to difficulties in

prosecuting and eventually convicting

suspected violators.

The Tripa case could also be

considered as part of a successful result

of collaborative actions promoted among

local and international NGOs’.

In the previous year, for example, the

Alliance of Environmental and Human

Rights NGOs, consisting of local, national

and international NGOs, has made a

public call for law enforcement against

the aforementioned illegal activity done

by the company that destroyed Tripa’s

peat swamps, putting pressure to the

central government who was promoting

an initiative related to reducing emissions

from deforestation and forest degradation

(REDD).

The biggest change, in terms of

impacts, however, is likely to be the

two Constitutional Court’s Decisions on

Judicial Reviews of Law No. 41 of 1999

on Forestry. The Decisions No. 45 of 2011

and 35 of 2012 by released by the Courthave provided a strong legal platform for

recognizing indigenous peoples and their

adat  (customary) forests in the Indonesian

legal system.

Initiated by the Indigenous Peoples’

Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN),

these court cases and their resultant

outputs mean that adat  forest can now be

registered as rights forest – not state forest

 – in the future. This is a fundamental

change since almost all forests, accordingto the 1999 Forestry Law, are categorized

as state forest and under the central

government’s authority.

In addition to approach in the

 judicial system, other NGOs and local

groups have been closely working

with their government counterparts to

ensure that they formulate and issue a

regulation or policy that leads to further

reforming Indonesia’s forestry and land

use regulations.

An example of this is works carried

out by the Sumatra Spatial Planning

Forum that has managed to convince the

government – governors in the island

and four national ministers – to produce

the Road Map for Saving Sumatra’s

Ecosystem.

The Road Map, eventually leading to

the issuance of Presidential Regulation

No. 13 of 2012 on Sumatra Island Spatial

Planning, aims to have cross-region

commitment in undertaking an island-wide

spatial planning to conserve forests and

protect biodiversity in Sumatra.

Regardless of these positive changes,

environmental degradation and natural

resource depletion still continue since

decentralization commenced.

This can happen apparently because

many elected politicians at local,

provincial and national levels, still have

the perception that better natural resource

management and environmental protection

are not a priority issue.

As a result, many policies producedby them are still in favor of continuous

natural resource exploitation.

To be able to change this, it is clear that

NGOs need to magnify their current works,

by increasing their engagement level,

reaching out these politicians and influential

government bureaucrats at all levels.

They also need to work with other

non-state actors, in this case progressive

corporations, to show case that responsible

and sustainable practices can beimplemented and achieved.

In a decentralized Indonesia, NGOs

are required to be strategic as well as

adaptive so that huge environmental

challenges can be dealt with, at all

levels, in a concerted manner. If

this can happen, Indonesia has the

opportunity to have better environment

and development.