Post-politicizing the Environment: Local Government Performance Assessments in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia is confronting an intensifying threat of ecological disaster due to excessive natural resource exploitation and environmental damage. Existing tools to evaluate local government performance are unable to critically assess many key aspects of natural resource and environmental management. The results of these formal performance assessments do not reflect the reality in local communities. We argue that this gap is caused by more than just inaccurate reporting; the gap between reality and assessment results is because official assessment approaches sideline the consideration of state–society relations and socio-political dimensions. The assessments reduce natural resource management and environmental protection in Indonesia to techno-managerial terms that reflect a post-politicizing of the environment, as outlined in Erik Swyngedouw’s critical social science literature. In this chapter, we look specifically at the content and application of these local government environmental performance assessment tools. While they may appear to cover key points of environmental good governance, their technocratic mode character is disguising politico-business linkages and oligarchical interests that damage the environment. Environmental crisis, social conflict, and democratic regression are consequently on the increase in Indonesia.

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“…Numerous reasons have been cited, the most important being the lack of technical training and knowledge to identify their own collective action problems, and need for capacity building programs which address this to reduce risk and help reframe the problem around social capacities rather than the need for technical solutions [29,31,39]. Existing policy evaluation tools have been criticized as not reflecting the actual social-political and environmental reality of local communities [40]. Failing to include community members in decision-making and the narrow focus on production indicators have been cited as key reasons why policy programs are missing their targets, because they overlook the importance of assessing the underlying social and environmental conditions driving performance [41][42][43].…”