Old Wine in a New Bottle: Neoliberalism and Water Resources Law 2019 in Indonesia

Abstract

Resistance to neoliberal legal reforms around the world has increased in recent decades due to the failure of water privatization to ensure affordable and sustainable water access in global South. Referring to the 2004 and 2019 Water Resources Laws, this paper presents Indonesia's experience to explore how the law reproduces and normalizes neoliberalism that places water as an economic commodity. We argue that although Indonesia's current water resources legal regime is based on populist rhetoric regarding the fulfillment of the human right to water and the role of the state in water management, the adopted water governance aims to facilitate the establishment of a conducive investment climate for the private sector by shifting the responsibility of the state in the fulfillment of the human right to water to a market-based allocation system. This paper describes the strategy adopted by the government in securing the water privatization agenda when dealing with judicial activism that requires water to be managed as public good.