The Environmental Damage and the Institutionalization of Carrying Capacity Concept in Indonesia

One of the causes of environmental damage is spatial planning policy which ignores the carrying capacity of the environment. Therefore, it is important to check how the institutionalization of carrying capacity concept of environmental in Indonesia. Since, the era of New Order, Indonesia had several regulations which related to carrying capacity of the environment and spatial planning. Whereas, in the regional autonomy period, there were Law Number 26 of 2007 [1] which concerned on Spatial Planning and Law No. 32 of 2009 [2] concerned on the Protection and the Management of Environment. In fact, the number of regulations did not yet guarantee the enforcement of carrying capacity of environment. Because from the checking results it was known that the policy framework of sustainable development was still limited as a formality; it had not really been used as a development paradigm. Economic interest was the top priority of government compared to environmental interest. Therefore, it influenced on the seriousness of government in making policy instruments to prevent the over carrying capacity of the environment on the use of environmental space. From the four policy instruments based on Chrishtopher Hood [3]; both nodality (information), authority, treasure (resources), and organization all showed that they were still weak. Consequently, there was an increase in environmental damage from time to time.