Marine Pollution Prevention and Response Effectiveness: MARPOL Implementation in Indonesian Territorial Waters and Strategic Straits

Indonesia's territorial waters, encompassing the world's most strategically significant maritime chokepoints including the Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok Straits, face acute and escalating marine pollution threats from the dense vessel traffic that transits these corridors daily. This study evaluates the effectiveness of MARPOL Annex I–VI compliance enforcement in Indonesian waters, identifying systemic implementation gaps and proposing an optimized enforcement and early warning response model. Employing a qualitative research design with thematic analysis and documentary review, the study engaged marine environmental inspectors, port state control officers, maritime law academics, and environmental scientists as primary respondents. Findings reveal an overall MARPOL implementation effectiveness composite score of 3.89 out of 5.00, with Annex I (oil pollution) and Annex VI (air pollution) enforcement identified as the most critically deficient implementation domains. The research demonstrates that Indonesian MARPOL enforcement is constrained by inspection capacity limitations, inter-agency coordination failures, and inadequate pollution response infrastructure across outer island port jurisdictions. The study contributes an enforcement optimization model and early warning pollution response system framework for Indonesian maritime environmental governance, with direct implications for maritime professional education at STIP Jakarta.