Intergenerational Justice in Natural Resource Management: A Legal Review of Excessive Mining Exploitation

Natural resource management in Indonesia faces a fundamental challenge because mining exploitation remains strongly influenced by an extractive development orientation that prioritizes short-term economic interests. Excessive exploitation of non-renewable resources not only causes ecological degradation but also threatens the availability, quality, and accessibility of natural resources for future generations, thereby raising concerns of intergenerational justice. This study aims to analyze the legal construction of mining exploitation restrictions from the perspective of intergenerational justice and to evaluate the capacity of Indonesian positive law to protect the ecological rights of future generations. This research employs a normative juridical method. The results show that the constitutional principles of state control, sustainability, and environmental awareness provide a legal basis for restricting mining exploitation when extraction threatens long-term ecological interests. Current mining regulations nevertheless reveal legal ambivalence because sustainability and environmental protection obligations coexist with licensing simplification, centralized authority, and an extractive development orientation. Existing preventive instruments have not established clear limits on the depletion of non-renewable mineral and coal resources. The principle of intergenerational equity therefore requires state control over natural resources to extend beyond present-generation interests by safeguarding resource options, environmental quality, and access for future generations. Strategic resource reserves can function as a preventive legal mechanism by designating certain mineral and coal reserves that cannot be exploited within a specified period. The novelty of this study lies in formulating strategic resource reserves as an operational legal instrument that connects intergenerational equity with the constitutional function of state control to prevent irreversible resource depletion before extraction occurs.