Juridical Review of Food Estate Project Land Clearing Against Environmental Damage Judging from Government Regulation No. 23 of 2021 concerning Forestry Implementation

Abstract

This article or paper aims to identify the weaknesses of using forest areas for food estate projects in existing regulations and improve them to ensure more effective environmental protection in the future. The reduction of forest area due to food estate projects can threaten the sustainability of local communities' livelihoods and even result in forced evictions from their homes. This can lead to serious social conflicts and harm the socio-economic sustainability of local communities. The problem focused on changes in forest area designation and changes in forest functions and forest area use. In order to approach this problem, data was collected through normative legal methods, which is a process to synchronize legal rules, legal principles, and legal doctrines to answer the legal issues at hand through a qualitative descriptive approach. As well as secondary legal materials used in this research are obtained from laws and regulations, books, articles, journals, the internet, and other reading sources that are relevant and can support research. This study concludes that large-scale land clearing such as food estate projects can have an impact on environmental damage which includes community rights. It is important for the government to consider the social, economic and environmental impacts of food estate projects, and involve stakeholders, especially farmers, in decision-making regarding agricultural and forest land use policies.