Indonesia needs natural resources management law

Indonesia badly needs natural resources management law to prevent uncontrolled exploitation of the resources based on sectoral laws and regulations, according to experts.

Daniel Murdiyarso, a deputy for environmental management to the state minister of environmental affairs, said that the implementation of autonomy law in year 2001 could lead to destruction of natural resources if local administrations use existing sectoral law to exploit their resources to increase locally-based income.

"With the natural resources management law, the use of natural resources would not anymore be seen from one sector only. For instance, mining of mineral resources is not decided based on mining consideration, but at the same time based on other things. Local people should also be involved in supervising the implementation," Daniel said.

Thus, the emphasis of the natural resources management law would be more on coordination. It will coordinate and synchronize various sectoral laws, such as mining law, agrarian law, forestry law and others.

"The drafting of this natural resources management bill is conducted in line with the implementation of regional autonomy," Daniel said.

Meanwhile, Maria SW Sumardjono, a land legal expert and also a regional autonomy consultant to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), shared Daniel's view, and said that the regional autonomy should go ahead, while the government at the same time drafting the natural resources management bill.

She noted that local administrations would not be able to exploit natural resources at their will until the central government issued supporting regulations for such sectoral laws. While the government is drafting such supporting regulations, the natural resources management bill would have been deliberated by the House of Representatives. (*)