Illegal mining has long been a serious problem in Indonesia and something which successive Governments have been unable or unwilling to take resolute action against.
The loss of Government revenue and, perhaps more importantly, the environmental and other damage that results from illegal mining is unquestionably very great.
The President has recently signalled that his Government finally intends to “tackle” the problem of illegal mining. However, what is lacking at this time is much detail about precisely how the Government will go about trying to eliminate illegal mining. That said, there seem to be at least two proposals currently under active consideration by the Government for the purpose of addressing the illegal mining problem.
In this article, the writer will review the existing legal avenues for dealing with illegal mining before considering each of the proposals that the Government is known to be considering as possible new strategies for this purpose. This review and consideration must necessarily touch on the politically sensitive issue of why it has proved so difficult for previous Governments to take resolute action against illegal mining. Inevitably, that leads to the very practical question of what, if anything, is different about the current Government which is likely to make it more or less likely that the current Government will be able to achieve meaningful progress in dealing with illegal mining when such progress has largely eluded previous Governments.
Authors:
Bill Sullivan
Email: bsullivan@cteolaw.com
Christian Teo
Email: cteo@cteolaw.com
Claudius Novabianto
Email: cnbianto@cteolaw.com