Problem and Alternative Solutions: Impact of Changes in Law concerning Regional Government on the Law of the National Sea

As one of the largest archipelagic countries in the world, Indonesia has an area of inland waters of 3.11 million km2 and a territorial sea area of 290,000 km2. Indonesia also has 17,504 islands, 34 provinces, and 514 cities/districts. For orderly administration, the government and parliament established Law No. 32/2004 amended by Law No. 23/2014 concerning regional governance. In both laws, there is little regulation on the management of marine areas in the provinces and districts/cities. Since the Law No. 32 of 2004 on amendments became Law No. 23 of 2014, some problems arose, namely vertical references, management authority, and archipelagic provinces or districts/cities. This paper describes the problems and alternative solutions to address the problems caused by the amendments to Law no. 32/2004 into Law no. 23/2014. The method used is to compare the vertical references used by Law no. 32/2004 namely LWL with Law. No. 23/2014 namely HWL. The results of this study recommend that to return to the vertical reference used, it must return to HWL by UNCLOS 1982. In addition, the authority for managing marine areas must also be returned to the district and city governments and there is recognition of districts/cities and archipelagic provinces that are not separated by the sea.