Sanitation Regulation in Indonesia:Obstacles and Challenges to the Achievement of SDGs Targets

Abstract

Data from the Ministry of Public Works and People’s Housing of the Republic of Indonesia in 2017 showed that only 34 from 541 regencies/cities in Indonesia have regional regulations on sanitation. If there is no significant increase in the availability of regional regulations on sanitation management until 2019, the government in the 2019-2024 period needs to have a strategy to accelerate the establishment of regional regulations on sanitation in all regencies/cities. This research was conducted to identify regulatory and bureaucratic constraints that prevented the acceleration of the establishment of regional regulations on sanitation in supporting the achievement of 100% access to appropriate sanitation in the Sustainable Development Goals. The interim findings in this research indicated that one of the factors that hindered the acceleration of the establishment of regional regulations was the slow pace of the executive and legislative bodies in ratifying the Sanitation Laws and Regulations. In fact, the discussion of regional regulations on sanitation in several regions was generally obstructed because regional parliaments questioned whether there was a law or a juridical basis for the establishment of the regional regulations. On the other hand, the executive and legislative bodies also did not immediately make a new Law on Water Resources after the previous Law on Water Resources was canceled by the Constitutional Court. Another factor that impeded the acceleration of the establishment of regional regulations on sanitation in various regions was the absence of policies that were able to integrate national and regional legislation programs with development plans at the national and regional levels. The lack of integration of legislation and development plans was also influenced by weak coordination between the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, the National Development Planning Agency, and the Ministry of Home Affairs.