Government Supervision of Oil Palm Plantations in Indonesia: Legal Issues and Proposed Remedies

Nasir Mohamad (), Bakker Laurens () and Toon van Meijl ()
Additional contact information
Nasir Mohamad: Anthropology and Development Studies, 6029 Radboud University , Nijmegen, Gelderland, The Netherlands
Bakker Laurens: Anthropology, 1234 University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands
Toon van Meijl: Anthropology and Development Studies, 6029 Radboud University , Nijmegen, Gelderland, The Netherlands

The Law and Development Review, 2025, vol. 18, issue 1, 1-31

Abstract: Palm oil is a major Indonesian export product, but governmental supervision of plantation corporationsʼ activities on the ground frequently fails, which leads to environmental damage as well as conflict between companies and communities. By employing a socio-legal approach, this study found that the legal framework of the development of oil palm plantations is imprecise, unclear and incomplete and, as a consequence, causes the governmentʼs weakness in supervising oil palm plantation operations. We discovered three main causes of this incompleteness of law in supervising oil palm plantations: the delay in establishing the implementing regulations, the absence of sanctions in case of non-compliance, and the use of imprecise words, and complex terms and language. In addressing such incompleteness, this study suggests drafting more detailed rules to minimize delegation to lower regulations, using more precise terms and concepts, and considering sanctions for officials who do not carry out their obligations. Furthermore, discretion can be an alternative to overcome the existing legal incompleteness in supervising oil palm plantation operations.

Keywords: legal incompleteness; government supervision; oil palm plantations; plantation permits; Indonesia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ldr-2024-0014 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:lawdev:v:18:y:2025:i:1:p:1-31:n:1002

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ldr/html

DOI: 10.1515/ldr-2024-0014

Access Statistics for this article

The Law and Development Review is currently edited by Yong-Shik Lee

More articles in The Law and Development Review from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().