Forest fires in Bromo and Rinjani national parks, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Flores, recurring haze across Kalimantan and long-standing illegal logging concerns in Papua have placed a single question back on the table for corporate clients and investors operating in Indonesia. Does government responsibility begin only after a disaster strikes, or does the law already require the state to prevent, supervise and enforce before damage occurs? The answer determines how businesses, landowners and public agencies should each assess their own exposure when environmental harm materializes.
Disaster Does Not Automatically Mean Government Liability
On August 15, 2026, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck near Mbay in Nagekeo Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. BMKG recorded the event as shallow and tsunami potential, issuing an early warning later lifted. Government figures place the toll at 68 deaths, 213 injuries and roughly 4,500 damaged homes and public facilities, with thousands of aftershocks continuing for weeks afterward.
An earthquake of this scale illustrates a category of harm the government cannot regulate away. Tectonic movement along the Flores Back-Arc Thrust is a natural phenomenon outside human control, and no statutory duty requires the state to prevent seismic activity itself. Government responsibility in this context attaches, if at all, to the adequacy of early warning systems, building codes, evacuation planning and post-disaster response rather than to the earthquake as an event. Establishing liability would require showing a specific duty the government failed to perform, not merely that a disaster occurred on its watch. This distinction between natural causation and regulatory omission runs through every example that follows.
The Government’s Preventive Role as Environmental Regulator
Indonesian law does not confine the state to a reactive role. Articles 71 and 72 of Law No. 32 of 2009 on Environmental Protection and Management require the Minister, governors and regents or mayors, within their respective authority, to supervise compliance with environmental permits and regulations, with Article 76 authorizing administrative sanctions ranging from written warnings to permit revocation. Article 88 imposes strict liability where an activity involves hazardous materials or poses a serious threat to the environment. Law No. 41 of 1999 on Forestry and Law No. 18 of 2013 on the Prevention and Eradication of Forest Destruction extend criminal liability for illegal logging, carrying penalties of up to fifteen years imprisonment and fines reaching Rp100 billion under Articles 19, 82 and 94. Government Regulation No. 22 of 2021 sets out the implementing framework for environmental permitting and control, and Law No. 24 of 2007 assigns the state a mitigation and preparedness mandate that extends well before any disaster declaration.
The fires that closed Bromo Tengger Semeru and Gunung Rinjani National Parks in August 2026 test this framework directly. The Bromo fire, first detected on August 3 in the Bantengan block and reportedly traced to unextinguished embers along a hiking trail, spread past 1,100 hectares before containment eleven days later. The Rinjani fire, which began days later in the Maletan block near Sembalun, burned roughly 30 hectares before being brought under control. Both occurred inside conservation areas under direct national park management, placing supervisory responsibility squarely with the relevant park authorities and the Ministry of Forestry rather than with a private concession holder.
Kalimantan presents a different regulatory picture. Environmental groups report that a majority of fire hotspots across the island this year fall within existing corporate concession boundaries, and national police confirmed more than 150 criminal cases and over 220 suspects for land and forest fires within a three-week period in August alone, spanning individual landowners and corporate actors. Papua’s persistent illegal logging problem reflects a related but distinct failure, one legal literature traces to weak interagency coordination between forestry, police and prosecutorial authorities rather than to an absence of applicable law. In each case the statute already assigns a preventive or supervisory duty. The open question is whether that duty was exercised.
When Regulatory Failure Becomes Legally Relevant
Regulatory omission becomes legally significant only when several elements align. The government must have held a specific statutory duty or supervisory authority over the activity in question, the risk must have been reasonably identifiable, an enforcement mechanism must have existed, and the failure to exercise it must show a legally relevant connection to the resulting harm. A budget shortfall alone does not satisfy this test. The National Disaster Management Agency’s 2026 allocation of Rp491 billion, down sharply from an estimated Rp2.01 trillion in 2025, raises legitimate questions about institutional capacity, and members of the House of Representatives have publicly urged its restoration. Yet a reduced budget reflects a fiscal and policy choice within the government’s discretion, not by itself a breach of a specific legal obligation. Liability would require identifying a statutory duty the funding shortfall directly prevented the government from performing.
The same caution applies to claims of uneven enforcement between corporate concessions and conservation areas. Differences in jurisdiction, land status, evidentiary access and the identity of the party who ignited the fire can justify different enforcement outcomes without amounting to arbitrary or unlawful discrimination. Where the law requires consistent application of supervisory and enforcement powers, any departure needs a specific factual basis before it becomes actionable rather than assumed.
Government responsibility for environmental damage in Indonesia does not begin only when a fire starts or an earthquake strikes. Where the law imposes a preventive, supervisory or enforcement duty, that responsibility extends to the quality of planning, monitoring and intervention that came before. It does not follow that every disaster or every act of environmental destruction creates government liability. What matters is whether a specific legal duty existed, whether the government failed to perform it, and whether that failure bears a demonstrable connection to the harm that followed. Effective environmental governance in Indonesia is measured as much by what the state prevents as by how it responds once damage is already done.
