The challenges in using and managing natural resources in Indonesia are immense. They include ensuring that resource utilisation benefits most Indonesians. Examines this and other related issues from a political, socio-economic, and environmental standpoint.

"B. J. Habibie may have served the shortest term of any of Indonesia's presidents, but his push for decentralization would affect the country for decades. Habibie came to power in 1998 and immediately set to work restructuring the government. He gave local districts more power, allowing them to elect their own leaders and create their own bylaws. After years of authoritarian rule, these reforms were meant to return power to the people. But that led to local governments engaging in bureaucratic and political conflict with the central government over control of valuable natural resources and the distribution of the revenue they generated. Decentralization became the most important political economic development in Indonesia of the past thirty years. Networked Business and Politics in Decentralizing Indonesia evaluates three cases of deep-seated political conflict and intrigue including central government, local governments, and multinational companies. It looks at how the structure of the national political economy has changed as the result of local politicians becoming involved in disputes with the national government over control of natural resources. It also analyzes how these changes will affect the distribution of wealth in the country as well as Indonesia's evolving democratic politics and modes of governance"--Provided by publisher.

Rents to Riches> focuses on the political economy of the detailed decisions that governments make at each step of the natural resource management (NRM) value chain. Many resource-dependent developing countries pursue seemingly shortsighted and suboptimal policies when extracting, taxing, and investing resource rents. The book contextualizes these micro-level outcomes with an emphasis on two central political economy dimensions: the degree to which governments can make credible intertemporal commitments to both resource developers and citizens, and the degree to which governments and inclined to turn resource rents into public goods. Almost 1.5 billion people live in the more than 50 World Bank client countries classified as resource-dependent. A detailed understanding of the way political economy characteristics affect the NRM decisions made in these countries by governments, extractive developers, and society can improve the design of interventions to support welfare-enhancing policy making and governance in the natural resource sectors. Featuring case study work from Africa (Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria), East Asia and Pacific (the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Timor-Leste), and Latin America and the Caribbean (Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Trinidad an dTobago_, the book provides guidance for government clients, domestic stakeholders, and development partners committed to transforming natural resource into sustainable development riches.

The Millennium Declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 and explicit targets were set to eradicate key problems in human development by 2015. This collection focuses specifically on the goals relating to gender issues that are problematic for women. The most relevant and contentious is that of promoting gender equality and empowering women. The book provides an overview of this and investigates literature that considers how gender is central to achieving the other goals. The contributors distinctively consider gender in the context of human security (or insecurity); the reduction and elimination of conflict would seem to be central to achieving targets. One of the major themes of this collection is whether gender insecurity has been exacerbated in an increasingly insecure world. The book considers not only military and civilian conflict in the contemporary era but also security in the broader sense of human development, such as environmental, reproductive and economic security.

'Natural Resources: Neither Course nor Destiny' brings together a variety of analytical perspectives, ranging from econometric analyses of economic growth to historical studies of successful development experiences in countries with abundant natural resources. The evidence suggests that natural resources are neither a curse nor destiny. Natural resources can actually spur economic development when combined with the accumulation of knowledge for economic innovation. Furthermore, natural resource abundance need not be the only determinant of the structure of trade in developing countries. In fact, the accumulation of knowledge, infrastructure, and the quality of governance all seem to determine not only what countries produce and export, but also how firms and workers produce any good.

‘Diagnosing the Indonesian Economy: Toward Inclusive and Green Growth’ discusses the critical constrains to inclusive economic growth in Indonesia. The volume includes a broad overview of Indonesia’s development since the 1960s, and features an analytic framework for the study that aims to identify the most binding constraints. The chapters analyze macroeconomic management since the Asian financial crisis; the status of Indonesia’s industrial transformation; the challenges pertaining to Indonesia’s infrastructure; the situation of human capital and employment; the record on poverty reduction; the impact and status of the decentralization effort; and the challenges attendant to the country’s environment and natural resources.

Indonesia is experiencing an historic and dramatic shift in political and economic power from the centre to the local level. The collapse of the highly centralised Soeharto regime allowed long-repressed local aspirations to come to the fore. The new Indonesian Government then began one of the world's most radical decentralisation programmes, under which extensive powers are being devolved to the district level. In every region and province, diverse popular movements and local claimants to state power are challenging the central authorities.This book is the first comprehensive coverage on decentralisation in Indonesia. It contains contributions from leading academics and policy-makers on a wide range of topics relating to democratisation, devolution and the blossoming of local-level politics.

This book examines the possibilities and limitations of corporate social responsibility in minimising the violent conflict often associated with natural resource exploitation. Through detailed and penetrating empirical analysis, the author skilfully asks why previous corporate social responsibility practices have not always achieved their aims. This theme is explored though an analysis of two of the most complex and protracted conflicts linked to natural resources in the Asia Pacific region: Bougainville (Papua New Guinea) and West Papua (Indonesia). Drawing on first-hand accounts of corporate executives and communities affected by resource conflict, this book documents the translation of global corporate social responsibility into local peace. Covering topics as diverse as post-colonialism, law, revenue distribution, security, the environment and customary reconciliation, this ambitious text reveals how and why current corporate social responsibility initiatives may be unable to assist extractive companies avoid social conflict. The study concludes that this is attributable to the failure of extractive companies to respond to the social and environmental issues of most concern to local host communities. The idea is that extractive companies could actively contribute to peace building if they were to engage with the interdependencies between business activity and the root causes of conflict. What sets this book apart is that it offers a holistic framework for extractive companies to engage with the complexity of resource conflict. ‘Interdependent Engagement’ is an integrated model of corporate social responsibility that encourages extractive companies to deal with the underlying causes of resource conflict, rather than applying solutions or critiques of their symptoms.

'This book provides an excellent overview of more than a decade of transformation in a forest landscape where the interests of local people, extractive industries and globally important biodiversity are in conflict. The studies assembled here teach us that plans and strategies are fine but, in the real world of the forest frontier, conservation must be based upon negotiation, social learning and an ability to muddle through.' Jeffrey Sayer, senior scientific adviser, Forest Conservation Programme IUCN - International Union for of Nature The devolution of control over the world's forests from national or state and provincial level governments to local control is an ongoing global trend that deeply affects all aspects of forest management, conservation of biodiversity, control over resources, wealth distribution and livelihoods. This powerful new book from leading experts provides an in-depth account of how trends towards increased local governance are shifting control over natural resource management from the state to local societies, and the implications of this control for social justice and the environment. The book is based on ten years of work by a team of researchers in Malinau, Indonesian Borneo, one of the world's richest forest areas. The first part of the book sets the larger context of decentralization's impact on power struggles between the state and society. The authors then cover in detail how the devolution process has occurred in Malinau, the policy context, struggles and conflicts and how Malinau has organized itself. The third part of the book looks at the broader issues of property relations, conflict, local governance and political participation associated with decentralization in Malinau. Importantly, it draws out the salient points for other international contexts including the important determination that 'local political alliances', especially among ethnic minorities, are taking on greater prominence and creating new opportunities to influence forest policy in the world's richest forests from the ground up. This is top-level research for academics and professionals working on forestry, natural resource management, policy and resource economics worldwide. Published with CIFOR

The rapid emergence of China as a major industrial power poses a complex challenge for global resource markets. Backed by the Chinese government, Chinese companies have been acquiring equity stakes in natural resource companies, extending loans to mining and petroleum investors, and writing long-term procurement contracts for oil and minerals. These activities have aroused concern that China might be "locking up" natural resource supplies, gaining "preferential access" to available output, and extending "control" over the world's extractive industries. On the demand side, Chinese appetite for vast amounts of energy and minerals puts tremendous strain on the international supply system. On the supply side, Chinese efforts to procure raw materials can either exacerbate or help solve the problems of high demand. Evidence from the 16 largest Chinese natural resource procurement arrangements shows that Chinese efforts—like Japanese deployments of capital and purchase agreements in the late 1970s through the 1980s—fall predominantly into categories that help expand, diversify, and make more competitive the global supplier system. Investigation of smaller projects indicates the 16 largest do not suffer from selection bias. However, Chinese attempts to exercise control over mining of rare earth elements may constitute a significant exception. The investigative focus of this analysis is deliberately narrow and precise, assessing the impact of Chinese resource procurement on the structure of the global supply base. The broader policy discussion in the concluding chapter raises other separate important issues, including the impact of Chinese resource procurement on rogue states, on authoritarian leadership, on civil wars, on corrupt payments and the deterioration of governance standards, and on environmental damage. Such effects may make patterns of Chinese resource procurement objectionable, on grounds quite apart from the debate about possible "control" of access on the part of China and Chinese companies.