Between The State And Capital: A Reconstruction Of The Philosophy Of Justice In The Regulation Of Tntn Forest Areas

Abstract

Forest area enforcement in Tesso Nilo National Park raises a question of justice, since the burden of enforcement appears to fall more heavily on small-scale cultivators while large-scale actors, who are the principal contributors to deforestation, are not addressed on equal terms. This research aims, first, to assess that asymmetry of enforcement priorities through John Rawls’ difference principle; and second, to formulate the state’s restorative responsibility on the basis of Hans Jonas’ principle of responsibility. The research applies a normative juridical method with statutory, case and legal-philosophical approaches. Primary legal materials comprise the 1945 Constitution, Law Number 5 of 1990 in conjunction with Law Number 32 of 2024, Law Number 41 of 1999, Law Number 32 of 2009, Articles 110A and 110B of Law Number 18 of 2013 in conjunction with the Job Creation Law, Presidential Regulation Number 5 of 2025 and decisions of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. Secondary materials consist of official data from the Directorate General of Natural Resources and Ecosystem Conservation, statements of the Forest Area Enforcement Task Force, civil society publications and mainstream media reporting, each triangulated against the others. The findings show that the asymmetry of enforcement burdens is not merely a matter of field implementation but is rooted in the design of the legacy-settlement scheme, which is more accessible to documented actors than to undocumented cultivators and that restoration instruments already exist in positive law but stall at the execution stage. The theoretical contribution of this research is the formulation of three reconstructive principles, namely proportionality of enforcement burdens, priority of restoration and participation based on the differentiation of subjects, as a normative basis for assessing enforcement policy in conservation areas.