Human resource and green port implementation: Legal findings from the Belawan Port case study
Keywords:
Green port, Legal fragmentation, Belawan port, Regulatory vacuum, Maritime environmental lawAbstract
Indonesia's maritime environmental governance confronts a critical regulatory vacuum: despite the enactment of Law No. 66 of 2024 amending the Shipping Law for the third time, no study has systematically evaluated the legal vacuum this law has created through its failure to establish explicit Green Port standards or mandatory human resource (HR) competency requirements. This study addresses that gap. Although existing scholarship has examined environmental policy and port sustainability in Indonesia separately, no prior research has integrated international maritime environmental law with national environmental legislation under a unified regulatory-theoretical framework to assess the legal basis for Green Port implementation. This study employs a juridical-empirical approach combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, collecting data through questionnaires and structured interviews with 31 port workers at Belawan Port, supported by documentary analysis of implementing regulations including Government Regulation No. 21 of 2010 and Government Regulation No. 22 of 2021. The analysis applies a descriptive-analytical method linking legal norms to empirical realities. The findings reveal three dimensions of legal fragmentation: vertical incoherence between national law and implementing regulations, horizontal fragmentation across ministerial jurisdictions, and temporal discontinuity arising from the absence of transitional provisions in Law No. 66 of 2024. The law introduced institutional restructuring without substantive environmental commitments, constituting what regulatory theory identifies as symbolic regulation. As a result, Belawan Port's 2023 Green Port certification lacks an explicit statutory basis, and existing environmental programs face legal uncertainty. This study is the first to integrate MARPOL, the IMO GHG Strategy, and the Paris Agreement with Indonesia's national statutory framework to map this normative vacuum. It concludes that the gap between positive law and operational maritime governance practice directly threatens the continuity of Green Port initiatives in Indonesia and undermines the country's commitments under the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
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