15 - New Legal Initiatives for Natural Resource Management in a Changing Indonesia: The Promise, the Fear and the Unknown

Summary

Much has been written about the effects of regional autonomy on natural resource management in Indonesia. While a survey of the literature generally will tout the benefits of decentralised management in the form of greater responsiveness, greater efficiency, greater transparency, greater accountability and so on, the literature on decentralisation in Indonesia – particularly as it relates to natural resource management – has been much less sanguine, portraying a system of governance that has moved rapidly towards greater exploitation at the regional level, with almost daily reports in local papers of corruption among regional parliaments, and little transparency among regional administrative offices (see, for example, Bünte 2004). At the same time, some districts and provinces (collectively referred to as regional governments) have undertaken some excellent initiatives and enacted some excellent regulations in order to better promote sustainable management, and clarify and enhance the administrative structure for more transparent natural resource management decisions. The question is now one of implementation of those regulations (Asia Foundation 2003).

Regardless of the direction, regional governments in Indonesia for the most part have fulfilled one universal truth of decentralisation: they have been much quicker and more responsive in exercising their newfound authorities than the central government has been in providing guidance or standards for those authorities. Only in 2004 – almost five years after the original decentralisation laws were enacted – did the central government enact revisions to those laws, and it is still developing a series of laws to better address natural resource management specifically.