Challenges to implementing oil palm plantation legislation in Indonesia

This article examines two key issues in oil palm plantation legislation in Indonesia. First, the relation of authority in governing oil palm plantation licensing to other sectors of legislation, such as land, spatial planning, environment, and forestry. Second, the various kinds of legal uncertainty that arise due to the complexity of legislation and its implications for the permitting process. In studying these two issues, we found that the complexity of the governance of oil palm plantation licensing leads to ambiguity, inconsistency, and incompleteness of legal provisions. We identify that ambiguous clauses give rise to different interpretations by government officials and plantation companies. Inconsistent provisions cause confusion as to which rules should be applied, while incompleteness of regulations frequently occurs because technical rules that are required for implementation are not available, thus creating a legal vacuum. These three factors create legal uncertainty in implementing regulations.