Making decentralized coastal zone management work in Indonesia: Case studies of Kabupaten Konawe and Kabupaten Pangkajene Dan Kepulauan

Abstract

Coastal governance in Indonesia is entering a new phase with new administration mechanisms, following the changes of political, administrative and fiscal framework resulting from decentralisation policy. For the first time provincial and district governments have mandates, resources, and responsibilities to manage their coastal zones. To this point, only a few studies have been conducted that focus on the analysis of effective coastal zone management (CZM) at district level in Indonesia under the decentralisation setting This dissertation presents a study of decentralized CZM in eastern Indonesia based on case studies of two districts in Sulawesi Island, Kabupaten Konawe in Southeast Sulawesi and Kabupaten Pangkajene dan Kepulauan (Pangkep) in South Sulawesi. The dissertation focuses on these district local governments’ responses to decentralisation policy in managing their coastal zones. This new shift is very significant in the sector of marine and coastal governance in Indonesia. This research applied qualitative methods through in-depth and semi-structured interviews as well as field-site observations. I argue that the dynamic of the local socio-political context and the interaction of local actors, such as Heads of District (Bupati), determine the effectiveness of decentralized coastal zone management. … The findings of this research indicate that the signs and seeds for effective decentralized CZM implementation in Konawe and Pangkep exist in some aspects, and can be built upon to achieve more successful practices in decentralized CZM. This dissertation holds several implications for decentralization studies on CZM issues, such as whether decentralized CZM is linear with improving accountability mechanisms. It calls for better understanding of role of various forms of accountability in decentralized CZM, and its linkage with local-central governance arrangements. Replicating this study in other parts of Indonesia could provide a more complete comparison of decentralized CZM implementation. The degrees of variation in research findings are important to canvass in order to add to the lessons learnt from decentralized CZM implementation.