From Response to Authorship: A Systematic Review of Authority and Participation in Indonesia's Post-Mining Land Governance

Abstract

Communities live with the social–ecological consequences of mining. This systematic review examines how Indonesian post-mining scholarship treats the distribution of authority over what those landscapes become. Following ROSES reporting standards, 101 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2025 were synthesized from Scopus and Dimensions and coded for governance arrangements, planning models, community participation, land-use pathways, and alignment with international best practice in mine closure. The review shows post-mining governance dominated by administrative compliance, addressed in 70 articles against 4 on land transfer and redistribution. Communities are commonly involved in consultation, implementation, and livelihood adaptation, but rarely in defining closure objectives. Only 6 studies integrate planning, authority, tenure, and financing across the closure sequence. This separation between bearing the consequences of closure and shaping its terms is conceptualized here as the response-authorship gap. The same pattern appears across levels of government, where closure authority sits with central and provincial agencies while residual environmental and socioeconomic burdens remain local. The evidence base is also geographically uneven, concentrating on Kalimantan coal and Bangka Belitung tin while providing limited insight into rapidly expanding nickel regions under hilirisasi. These findings point toward closure approvals conditioned on identified end-users, recognized decision rights, secure tenure, and financing that extends to long-term monitoring.