Mining activities in the regions have increased significantly since the introduction of regional autonomy or decentralization. It gives each region the authority to regulate licensing in their respective regions, but supervision becomes loose.
Based on a report by the Pay What You Pay (PWYP) for Extractive Resources, many problems arise due to insufficient due diligence in licensing, including overlapping mining areas with protected and conservation forest areas.
PWYP researcher Rizky Ananda stated that the number of mining licenses (IUP) in 2001 was 750. However, since decentralization began in the ten years, the number had jumped to more than 10,000 licenses in 2010.
“Of the 10,000 mining licenses, 40 percent of them are coal licenses with a total of 16.27 million hectares,” said Rizky in a Public Discussion on Coal Governance Improvement in Indonesia at the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel, Central Jakarta, Thursday (8/6 ).
According to Rizky, mining licensing boomed from 2001 to 2010 because the transition period towards regional autonomy was not synchronized.
The central government’s efforts to collect mining license data after the increase in licenses are adjusted to Law Number 4 of 2009, which is carried out to classify into Clean and Clear (CnC) and non-Clean and Clear (non-CNC). However, this step did not go well due to rejection from many regions because it was considered that the legal umbrella in determining CnC and non-CnC was unclear.
Rizky added that the forest area was also used for mining activities, with 102,000 hectares of coal concession types PKP2B (Coal Mining Concession Work Agreement) located in conservation forests. Meanwhile, those in protected forests reached 123.8 thousand hectares.
For IUP type concessions, there are 194.8 thousand hectares in conservation forest areas and 519.8 thousand hectares in protected forest areas, so that the coal permits that still exist in protected forest areas and conservation forests reach 940.4 thousand hectares or 15 percent of the total mining concession area.
“The distribution of coal concessions located in conservation and protected forest areas throughout Indonesia are mostly located in Papua, East Kalimantan, West Papua, and Aceh,” said Rizky.
From 2014 to April 2017, it was recorded that 776 mining licenses or 3.56 million hectares of coal mining were revoked or terminated by regional heads because they were known to have non-CnC status and were still in the exploration stage.
The remaining coal mining licenses until April 2017 reached 2,966, of which 52 percent or 1,561 licenses are known to have expired in December 2016. While the remaining 1,405 licenses are still active, but 217 licenses are still non-CnC status.
With these findings, it is hoped that the problematic coal IUP will be controlled. Local governments need to act decisively to overcome this problem.
“The government must be firm and consistent in revoking or terminating both at the central and regional levels,” said Rizky.
Besides, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources’ need for data integration is significant to synchronize existing permits to supervise mining activities. Online state revenues also need to be developed, such as company databases, spatial data, production plan data, budgets, and export permits. “This is so that the government can supervise and improve tax compliance for mining business actors,” concluded Rizky.