Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia, Implications ...

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Origins and Scope of Indonesia’s Decentralization Laws
Such competing claims have been symptomatic of the intense political struggles that
have framed the decentralization process in Indonesia’s forestry sector over the last
several years. Although Law 22/1999 was meant to be a cross-sectoral law providing
broad guidelines for decentralized governance, the concept of regional autonomy
was never fully embraced by forestry sector policymakers at the national level. The
apparent lack of coordination between the MoF as it was revising the basic legislation
of the forestry sector and the Ministry of Home Affairs – which was overseeing the
decentralization process – led to unintegrated and contradictory laws, reflecting very
different sets of interests. The struggles embodied in these contradictions have been
complicated by the fact that Indonesia’s legal system has had no effective mechanism
for resolving even fundamental inconsistencies in the nation’s legal code.
3.8 Government Regulation 34/2002
On June 6, 2002 President Megawati Soekarnopoetri – Indonesia’s third president
since the collapse of the Soeharto regime in May 1998 and a leader often viewed
as less sympathetic to regional autonomy than her two immediate predecessors
– signed into law Government Regulation 34/2002 on Forest Administration and
the Formulation of Plans for Forest Management, Forest Utilization, and the Use of
the Forest Estate. 20 This was designed to be the implementing regulation for three
parts of Law 41/1999: Article 5 (on Forest Management); Article 7 (on Supervision);
and Article 15 (on Compensation and Administrative Sanctions). In the context of
Indonesia’s decentralization process, Regulation 34/2002 is particularly significant in
that it provides the first substantial elaboration since the enactment of Law 41/1999
of the national government’s regulatory framework for such important forest-related
activities as the classification of state-controlled forest lands and the harvesting,
processing, and marketing of forest products.
When it was enacted in June 2002, Regulation 34/2002 was widely seen as an
effort on the part of Indonesia’s national government to recentralize administrative
and regulatory authority in the forestry sector. In virtually all aspects, Regulation
34/2002 shares the centrist tone of Law 41/1999, assigning primary authority in most
significant areas of forestry planning and management to the central government.
To the extent that Regulation 34/2002 delegates authority to regional governments,
it generally does so in areas of secondary importance and makes this authority
contingent on coordination with and approval of the MoF. Moreover, the delegation
of such authority is largely restricted to provincial governments. As in Law 41/1999
and Regulation 25/2000, the administrative authority of district and municipal
governments is hardly mentioned in Regulation 34/2002.
In its treatment of forest classification and the formulation of forest management
plans, for instance, Regulation 34/2002 states that government-controlled forests
will be divided into three categories: Conservation Forests; Protection Forests; and
Production Forests (Art. 2). Responsibility for formulating long-term (i.e. 20-year)
and medium-term (i.e. 5-year) management plans for forests within each category is
assigned to the Provincial Forestry Service (Dinas Kehutanan Propinsi), although
ultimate authority to approve these plans is assigned to the MoF. Responsibility for