Keywords

1 Introduction

Environments are specific historical results of socio-physical processes. (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 88)

In mid-June 2021, Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Minister, Siti Nurbaya, bestowed the Nirwasita Tantra – or “Green Leadership” – Award to the Banyuwangi District Government from East Java Province. The award is given annually to provincial and district/municipal governments that exhibit the best performance in mainstreaming the environmental sustainability agenda in their policies. The selection is based on the submission of the “Regional Environmental Management Performance Information Document” (Dokumen Informasi Kinerja Pengelolaan Lingkungan Hidup Daerah – DIKPLHD). The Banyuwangi District Government also received the Innovative Government Award (IGA) from the Ministry of Home Affairs for 3 years between 2017 and 2020 (Fanani, 2020). The IGA is the highest award given to local governments assessed to be successful in developing public service innovation.

Contrary to the public face of Banyuwangi District’s exemplary performance in winning awards during this time, the district’s significant environmental problems continued to worsen. Local conflicts in the Tumpang Pitu Mountains began in 2015 when the area was converted from a protected forest area to a forest production area to allow mining exploitation permits to be issued (Riski, 2016). Local inhabitants continue to maintain that the mining activities are fueling ecological crisis and affecting the sustainability of people’s livelihoods.

Environmental activists who opposed the Tumpang Pitu mine in Banyuwangi Distirct were also criminalized, including Heri Budiawan and Budi Pego (Hakim & Zuhro, 2018). In the latter case, local authorities portrayed Budi Pego as an agitator spreading communist ideas, and a local court sentenced him to 4 years imprisonment in 2018. An alliance of academics and civil society activists assessed the case and found the prosecution did not present solid evidence in the trial (Hakim, 2019). The troubles in Tumpang Pitu and the Budi Pego case were not documented in the DIKPLHD report that won Banyuwangi Distirct the Green Leadership Award. The case illustrates how techno-managerial assessments neglect real problems in grassroots communities and conceal the hidden face of environmental management in Indonesia.

The government capacity to acknowledge societal problems related to natural resource exploitation and build them into effective policies is crucial. Long-standing grievances can trigger violent conflict if the government does not provide a serious response. Based on the reports from the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (Konsorsium Pembangunan Agraria – KPA), as shown in Fig. 4.1, there has been an increasing trend of violent conflicts related to natural resource management in the last decade. KPA noted that there were almost 3500 cases in various regions of Indonesia from 2009 to 2019. It started from 89 cases in 2009, peaked in 2017 with 659 cases, and decreased slightly to 241 cases in 2019. These conflicts occurred in various sectors such as plantations, mining, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and infrastructure (KPA, 2015, p. 5).

Fig. 4.1
A line graph illustrates Indonesia's agrarian conflict from 2009 to 2020. The line initially rises till 2014, lowers in 2015, rises in 2017, and then falls once more in 2018.

Agrarian conflict in Indonesia, 2009–2019. (Compiled from KPA, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)

Full size image

Local governments must provide equitable access to public services, including a sustainable environment for all residents in their territories. However, the Banyuwangi case illustrates the gap between the local government’s performance assessment result and the reality faced by local communities and those activists attempting to bring difficult social and political issues into the spotlight. This contradiction raises a difficult question: How can the results of the official government assessment differ so markedly from reality? Rather than representing the consequence of inaccurate assessment, we argue that this contradictory phenomenon is caused by the problematic approach embedded in local government assessment tools that neutralize state–society relations and socio-political dimensions. The depoliticized assessment tools have methodological problems because they depend heavily on formal document sources. Rendering natural resources management and environmental protection into technical matters leads to social conflict and environmental crisis. This is why award-friendly local governments have massive environmental problems and social conflict.

In light of critical social science literature, particularly from Erik Swyngedouw, the authors maintain that the local government performance assessment tools used by Indonesian governments are institutionalizing the post-politicization of the environment. Post-politicization occurs when techno-managerial approaches become the dominant paradigm in viewing the socio-ecological arrangements of everyday life. In this way, local government performance assessment tools fail to capture the complexity and conflictual aspects of socio-ecological relations. Technocratic approaches overlook ecological problems connected closely to social ties, political constraints, and interest struggles. This technocratic mode of governance and the post-politicization of the environment are contributing to democratic regression noted in Indonesia.

The authors conducted a critical examination of local government performance assessments, especially related to environmental issues, and divided it into five sections. This article is started by briefly discussing Erik Swyngedouw’s concept of post-politicization and the data collection methods of this essay. We then focus on the two performance assessment tools used to select the winners of the Innovative Government Award (IGA) and Nirwasita Tantra or Green Leadership Award, using empirical insights gathered from our fieldwork. In Sect. 4.4, we analyze the impact of technocratic modes of governance on the democratic regression recently noted by scholars in Indonesia. Section 4.5 concludes the analysis with recommendations to improve the tools and promote the agenda on democratizing environments.

2 Post-politicizing the Environment: Concept and Definition

Post-politicization in this article refers to the concept introduced by Erik Swyngedouw in his 2018 publication entitled “Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-political Environment.” Swyngedouw defined post-politicization as “the contested and uneven process by which consensual governance of contentious public affairs through the mobilization of techno-managerial dispositives sutures or colonizes the space of the political” (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. xvi). The techno-managerial style of the government dominates political processes within state–society relations. The government has the authority to define public issues, such as those linked to the environment, economic conditions, terrorism, or urban problems, and how to solve them. Therefore, public issues can be framed in managerial and technical terms devoid of socio-economic-political complexities, such as the structure of inequality and uneven power relations. The reality of antagonistic relations among societal groups in public affairs is processed through techno-managerial governance modes that prioritize accountancy rules, risk calculation (self-assessment), and competitive performance benchmarking (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 8 and 34). Furthermore, Swyngedouw explains that

Such depoliticizing gestures disavow the inherently heterogeneous and often antagonistic relations that cut through the social, and reduce the terrain of the political to the art or techné of public management. In other words, the political domain has been systematically narrowed over the past few decades to a techno- managerial apparatus of governance whereby fundamental choices are no longer possible or deemed reasonable. While problems and contentious issues of public concern (like environmental crises, urban revolts, terrorist threats, or economic conditions) are generally recognized, they are dealt with by means of consensual governance arrangements that do not question the wider social, ecological, and political-economic frame. Technological, institutional, and managerial “fixes” are negotiated that leave the basic political-economic structure intact. (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. xvi)

Post-politicization leads to the erosion of political control and accountability, contributing to democratic regression and even autocratic governance. Government policies are far from the people’s aspirations and daily reality because they are formulated and implemented to serve a small group of individuals who have greater power and resources, a phenomenon linked to the rise of oligarchic policing (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 33). The subordination of civil society power in public policy matters is not conducted through the repressive violence that commonly appears in authoritarian regimes. Domination is carried out through consensual agreements fabricated in legal-institutional mechanisms and supported by administrative experts. Instead of voices, disagreement, and discontent, we have noise. As such, the politics and discontent surrounding arrangements for public goods, such as the environment or ecological change, are neutralized through so-called “good governance” mechanisms (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 27).

According to Swyngedouw (2018, pp. 88–89), the environment does not emerge from a vacuum but is the historical result of socio-physical processes. Therefore, socio-ecological change is never socially or ecologically neutral. He further stated that “the production of socio-ecological arrangements is always a deeply conflicting, and hence irrevocably political process” (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 89), indicating that socio-environmental arrangements have never been and will never be neutral because of the unequal power relations in social life. As such, the production of these arrangements should refer to fundamental questions, such as who gains and who pays for them, who benefits from, and who suffers (and in what ways) from ecological change (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 89). Technocratic modes of governance undermine efforts to democratize environments, but democratic approaches are necessary because they pave the way for “identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and more inclusive modes of producing natures can be achieved” (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 89).

3 Data Collection Methods

This essay reflects the authors’ experience developing alternative local government performance assessments for environment and natural resource management since 2016. The authors did not work with the tools or teams linked to the assessments used in the IGA or the Green Leadership Awards described above. At first, we conducted fieldwork to observe the local government performance on natural resource management in Bima District (West Nusa Tenggara), Kotawaringin Timur District (Central Kalimantan), Gianyar District (Bali), Pandeglang District (Banten), and Medan City (North Sumatra). This fieldwork provided the basis for formulating assessment components and indicators (Satriani et al., 2021).

From this research in five regions, we discovered that the crucial factors influencing the success of local governments in dealing with issues of natural resource exploitation are license permit processes, access to information, public participation, and impact management. These four issues became the focus of the alternative assessment tools later developed by the authors. These new assessment tools enabled assessors to identify and record the complexities of natural resource management and to highlight real problems such as undocumented institutional problems and local conflict, patronage politics, shortcomings in existing socialization/participation mechanisms, criminalization of activists, and local community vulnerability to disasters.

The Asia Foundation assisted the authors in refining the instruments by supporting additional activities, such as fieldwork, expert meetings, and workshops. Collaborating with the Asia Foundation, the authors tested their revised local government performance assessment tools in seven districts and municipalities: Banyuwangi District (East Java), Klungkung District (Bali), Boalemo District (Gorontalo), Kubu Raya District (West Kalimantan), Ogan Komering Ilir District (South Sumatra), Pelalawan District (Riau), and Samarinda City (East Kalimantan) (Permana et al., 2019). Additional fieldwork was carried out so that the instrument could better accommodate various local contexts. The authors obtained numerous inputs from strategic stakeholders during the testing process that helped synchronize the needs of central and provincial governments and civil society organizations.

The authors compared the newly proposed tool with other local government performance evaluation tools, including the IGA assessment of the Ministry of Home Affairs and the DIKPLHD and Green Leadership Award assessments tools from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. We compared data sources, assessment methods, and assessment indicators. Overall, our approaches were significantly different from existing government performance evaluation processes that do not accommodate or, in some cases, even involve critical groups in the region. Our system does not rely on submissions of lengthy documents but seeks more critical assessments from progressive NGOs and intellectuals.

4 Review on Local Government Performance Assessment Tools

Local government performance assessment systems are relatively recent phenomena in Indonesia, dating from the end of one of the most stringent centralized authoritarian systems in the world (Booth, 2014, p. 33). During the New Order period (1966–1998), local governments acted only as implementers of central government policies. The onset of widespread democratization and decentralization that followed in 1999 was marked by a lack of local government capacity and institutional memory to manage their governance functions autonomously, as well as the policy and program tools needed to formulate plans and later evaluate their work. Therefore, local governments tended to fit into a technocratic mode that defined performance in basic administrative-managerial terms. This one-size fits-all approach to mainstreaming decentralization was endorsed by international donors such as the World Bank (Hadiz, 2010).

The central government took the lead in establishing local government performance evaluation systems. Most systems created by line ministries and agencies used a “ranking system” in their evaluation tools used at provincial and district/municipal levels. Positive assessment result was linked to heightened prestige as well as access to budget funding and other support incentives. Decentralization saw several key functions become the authority of local governments, but Law No. 23/2014 on Regional Autonomy brought many backs under central government control. Local governments, nevertheless, remain the key intermediary actor between the central government and communities. They have substantial authority over key matters, such as providing licenses and recommendations for natural resource exploitation, including the Environmental Impact Analysis (Analisis Mengenai Dampak Lingkungan – AMDAL), and land use permits as determined in Regional Spatial Plans. Local government agencies are also crucial in providing public services related to environmental protection to citizens.

There was a proliferation of evaluation systems in line with the development of modern public governance. However, the capacity for evaluation in local government is uneven, leading to poor standards of reporting and assessment of results (Sanderson, 2001, p. 297). In the Indonesian context, state ministries and agencies created their own local government performance evaluation systems. The Ministry of Home Affairs was the most active in this, as they are responsible for controlling and monitoring the governance work of local governments.

The majority of these local government performance evaluation systems are based on administrative requirements and managerial or technocratic performance relating, for example, to budget spending, the issuance of local regulations, standard operational procedure (SOP) documents, visual documentation (photos and videos), supporting infrastructure, and news from online media. As such, local governments that are diligent in collecting and submitting these documents have a greater chance of rising in the ranking system and of winning awards. Although some assessment tools include opinion surveys or interviews, the extent to which these modalities involve all stakeholders and the depth of information is unclear.

To present a more detailed picture of local government performance assessment tools, we consider the mechanisms associated with the Regional Innovation Index or Innovative Government Award (IGA) and the Nirwasita Tantra or Green Leadership Award. We chose these tools because of their high public profile and because they are often used as the basis for claiming success in local government performance. In addition, these two assessment tools are still actively used until this time. Although the IGA does not explicitly evaluate the performance of local governments in environmental affairs, it helps illustrate the technocratic mode of government that is the basis for local government performance evaluations in general.

4.1 The Innovative Government Award (IGA)

The issue of promoting innovation at local government levels came to the forefront following the issuance of Law No. 23/2014 as the amendment of Indonesia’s regional autonomy law that was previously regulated in Law No. 22/1999 and Law No. 32/2004. In 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a regulation to evaluate local government innovation initiatives and to map progress over time. The index also aims to benchmark and enable sharing experiences about innovation between local governments (Tan, 2019). Assessment results are announced to the public, and winners receive incentives from the central government. The Banyuwangi District Government received 9 billion rupiah (USD 624 thousand) when they won the award in 2019 (Gewati, 2019).

In the initial assessment stage, each local government must collect and submit information to the Ministry’s online portal (http://index.inovasi.otda.go.id/jasa/). Two types of supporting documentation must be submitted via the portal, i.e., the local government profile and the profile of the innovation program itself. The supporting documents related to the local government profile are (1) local government vision and mission; (2) the number of innovations produced by the local government; (3) the amount of per capita income, employment, investment, and regional income (Pendapatan Asli Daerah – PAD); (4) the audit result from Audit Board of the Republic Indonesia (Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan – BPK); and (5) Human Development Index (Indeks Pembangunan Manusia – IPM).

Meanwhile, the documents that must be submitted related to the profile of the innovation program are (1) local government regulation on the innovation program; (2) the availability of human resources; (3) budgeting documents; (4) information technology infrastructure; (5) document of the public campaign; (6) document on technical implementation; (7) document of public complaint service; (8) document of satisfaction survey; and (9) visual documentation, such as photos and videos showing program activity (Kemendagri, 2019). Once a local government sends all the documents, the central government forms a team to assess the submission. The assessment team chooses the best local government at provincial and district/municipal levels. They will also visit the regions to validate the documents. The Ministry of Home Affairs invites winners to present their innovation policies in Jakarta. Many aspects of the submission and review processes clearly follow accepted “good governance” approaches, and the IGA process shows the government’s normative policy commitment.

Based on our empirical findings from our fieldwork in 12 regions from 2016 to 2019, the authors found that the IGA assessment method is problematic (Syafi’i & Gayatri, 2019; Satriani et al., 2021; Permana et al., 2019). The driving force within Indonesia’s assessment bureaucracy is applying formal mechanisms that ensure positive outcomes in government reports and submissions. A noticeable factor in the failure of administrative-based assessments to comprehend reality is the presence of patronage networks within the bureaucracies. Possessing relevant skills, competencies, and credentials needed to conduct assessments was not as important as political interests regarding the appointment and rotation of employees (informant interview, 2018).

The indicators of participation and socialization were also problematic. We found that the practice of promoting public participation was simply by sending a letter to the village head. Village heads then had the authority to decide who to invite to “public” meetings. The government used residents’ signatures from the attendance list to claim participation in policymaking activities. This practice illustrates how technocratic modes of governance assessment warp relations between the state and society and spread misrepresentation. It is a pattern in normalizing “good governance,” which reduces political–social input to the formal systems.

We also found that ineffective policy socialization from the local government was a direct cause of the violent conflicts in Bima Regency, West Nusa Tenggara Province, in 2010 and 2012 (Satriani, 2015). The local government merely conveyed government policies without collecting and considering residents’ concerns and aspirations. People directly affected by the government policies and programs did not have access to sufficient information on the exploration and exploitation of natural resources in their local area (Satriani et al., 2021). Residents were surprised by sudden exploration activities without any public consultation.

4.2 Nirwasita Tantra (The Green Leadership Award)

Nirwasita Tantra, popularly known as the Green Leadership Award, is based on the Regional Environmental Management Performance Information Document (Dokumen Informasi Kinerja Pengeloaan Lingkungan Hidup Daerah – DIKPLHD) at the provincial and district/municipal levels. The DIKPLHD is formulated by a team formed by the head of local government consisting of bureaucrats, academic representatives, and community representation. This document consists of two reports: the first report contains the executive summary, and the second report contains information on the performance of local environmental management. The complete report explains environmental problems in the region, their causes, impacts, and efforts to improve environmental quality based on the analysis of Driving Force, Pressure, State, Impact, and Response (Pusat Data dan Informasi Sekretariat Jenderal KLHK, 2018, p. 1). The team should also elaborate on the priority issues in improving the quality of the environment.

According to the official documents, several key aspects of the DIKPLHD formulation process must involve public participation and/or issues of recognized public concern. However, due to the fact that the local government directly selects DIKPLHD authors, most of the team comprises hand-picked bureaucrats, and the independence of the team and its assessment cannot be guaranteed. It is difficult to find any sort of critical analysis on environmental issues and the management of natural resources in a DIKPLHD report. Local governments want and sometimes need a positive assessment result in order to access resources or boost prestige. As such, the DIKPLHD approach is unlikely to present factors like lucrative relations between government elites and business actors and their links to environmental damage. Therefore, the formulation of DIKPLHD should involve independent civil society organizations with a progressive and independent position in environmental and natural resource issues, such as the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia – WALHI) and/or the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (Yayasan Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Indonesia – YLBHI).

The involvement of organizations such as WALHI and YLBHI could make the DIKPLHD process more critical and objective and ensure that government assessment and reporting cover all sides of environmental governance in the regions. In our fieldwork research, we found many instances of undocumented institutional problems and local conflicts. Although Banyuwangi District Government received the Green Leadership Award, local institutional capacity in mitigating potential environmental impacts is insufficient. For example, the district lacks an environmental laboratory to test and measure environmental damage (Satriani et al., 2021) but has devoted resources to business investment licensing through its Public Service Mall.

Another fundamental weakness is that the DIKPLHD cannot capture the complexity of environmental problems and ecological crises in the regions because it sidelines political dimensions to maintain the façade of good governance. Environmental issues are deeply politicized and conflictual, but the DIKPLHD frames them in a nonpolitical approach. The detailed case of the violent conflict at Tumpang Pitu and the criminalization of environmental activists, such as Budi Pego, is hardly mentioned in Banyuwangi District’s DIKPLHD, even though it had a significant impact on local livelihoods and attracted public concern. An environmental assessment that ignores the nature of asymmetric power holders in a society and emphasizes the technocratic aspects of governance will fail to capture the complexity of ecological problems.

5 Post-politicizing the Environment and Indonesian Democratic Regression

The concept of post-politicization defined by Swyngedouw (2018) is relevant to criticizing local government performance assessments in Indonesia. This concept comprehends the social construction of techno-managerial arrangements perceived as “normal” forms of governance. The domination of technocratic modes of governance makes environmental regulation in Indonesia fail to capture complex realities and conflictual relations in socio-ecological change. Environmental change is not a neutral process but is influenced by the interests of asymmetric power holders in the society. Environmental arrangements result from political processes and power plays, but Indonesian systems tend to be non-political. Therefore, the results of the local government performance assessments are incapable of reflecting real conditions. As such, this kind of assessment is incapable of issuing a “wake-up call” for the government to respond to ecological crises and environmental damage.

Post-politicization is a concept that exposes the weakness of “good governance” (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 27). In our current good governance epoch, techno-managerial reference frames dominate the running of government and shape state–society relations. Techno-managerial approaches make “the state operate increasingly “at a distance” from the concerns, drives, and desires of large parts of civil society” (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 33). When policies on natural resource and environmental management are not inclusive, protests and resistance easily occur, as seen in Indonesia’s increasing trend of agrarian conflicts over the last decade (see Fig. 4.1). “Oligarchic policing” – wherein the politico-business elite determine government policies and practices and deny access to underprivileged societal groups – becomes increasingly evident. Community members who take a public stand become targets and are arrested and imprisoned, such as Effendi Buhing, an indigenous Kinipan community leader in Central Kalimantan. Effendi was arrested and charged with theft, assault, and robbery (Pahlevi, 2020). Excessive deforestation in Central Kalimantan has damaged natural environments on a massive scale, making local inhabitants vulnerable to floods and landslides.

The existing local government performance assessment fails to capture the power asymmetry dimension and structure of inequality that influences the natural resource exploitation process. In the post-politicization concept, power asymmetry is indicated by oligarchic policing. It occurs when the nonelite civil society is marginalized in the policy process because the government only serves individuals with greater power and resources (Swyngedouw, 2018). Oligarchic policing triggers conflicts and protests and contributes to the ecological crisis and disasters in Indonesia. The 2021 flood in South Kalimantan also provides insight into how predatory political-economy elites caused people to be vulnerable to climate hazards due to massive environmental damage (Permana, 2021). The lucrative politico-business linkages transformed the green zones and water catchment areas along the Barito River into extractive industries such as mining and palm oil plantations.

Another example is the haze crisis that occurs every year in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Studies have found that the greatest challenge to stopping the crisis is powerful clientelism networks between palm oil companies and political elites (Varkkey, 2015). The companies’ plantation activities are protected, including using fire for land clearing. Others have noted that land clearing with fire increases around the time of local elections because many politicians use land for vote-buying (Purnomo et al., 2019). Therefore, technical solutions, such as strengthening government capacity in firefighting services, will not solve the more fundamental problem.

The increasing intensity of ecological disasters is also symptomatic of democratic regression. Experts have an emerging consensus that Indonesia is suffering democratic regression (Warburton & Aspinall, 2019, p. 256), which is characterized by the presence of national and local oligarchs within a “system of power relations that enables the concentration of wealth and authority and its collective defense” (Hadiz & Robison, 2013, p. 37). The democratization that began in 1998, followed by decentralization in 1999, did not radically change the national power structure and the politico-business oligarchy survived (Hadiz & Robison, 2013, p. 38). The adoption of techno-managerial governance approaches indirectly contributed to this democratic regression because of the erosion of public control and accountability (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 33). In the Indonesian context, the performance of local governments is assessed with certain norms that exclude control from society. Thus, protests and discontent, which are part of public control, are delegitimized through a series of managerial-expertise justifications. The decline of public control can be exemplified by the weakening of public control in producing environmental impact assessment (AMDAL) as part of the business license process under the country’s recent Omnibus Law (Permana, 2020).

6 Conclusion

Based on our fieldwork and academic review, the authors conclude that local government performance assessments, such as the IGA and DIKPLHD, fail to capture the reality of environmental change in Indonesia, especially the complex problems related to power relations and the structure of inequality. Although only two examples have been reviewed in this paper, they are indicative of the pervading problems of techno-managerial approaches to environmental management. Local governments lack the capacity to conduct assessments while nongovernment participation in assessment teams and processes is flawed. The assessments tend to rely on documentation, and so diligent administration and complete submissions are rewarded, not performance. Conflicts are increasing due to the marginalization of political–social aspects. Participation of progressive, civil society institutions is needed to democratize the environment and improve assessment results.

While local government performance assessments need to change their reliance on formal document sources, they must also accommodate progressive civil society organizations, such as WALHI and YLBHI, in the assessment process. These two institutions have networks in 34 provinces in Indonesia, with human resources to act as assessment partners. They can also recommend local academics of high integrity to be involved in the assessment in each region. In this way, the participatory approach to assessing local government performance is no longer just a normative tagline but will become a substantial principle. Without radical improvement, assessment activities will only be “business as usual” amidst a looming ecological crisis. Local government performance assessments should be able to contribute to democratizing environments in Indonesia. Democratizing environments means adopting more egalitarian socio-ecological arrangements, more equitable distribution of social power, and more inclusive modes of producing natures (Swyngedouw, 2018, p. 89).