Power, expertise, and policy shifts: Governance of karst resources by Indonesia’s geological agency

State scientific agencies occupy an ambiguous position in environmental governance: formally mandated to deliver impartial expertise, they are simultaneously embedded in political-economic systems that press technical judgments toward developmental ends. This paper examines how that tension shaped Indonesia’s Geological Agency (GA) in its governance of karst resources at the Watuputih Groundwater Basin, North Kendeng Mountains, a case in which the Agency moved from a conservation-oriented stance to one that authorised continued limestone extraction. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography (29 semi-structured interviews, observation of a public scientific examination, and documentary analysis) and deploying Svarstad, Benjaminsen and Overå’s (2018) pluralistic power framework, we trace the mechanisms through which this institutional shift was produced. The GA’s repositioning was not reducible to leadership change or procedural irregularity. Three interlocking mechanisms were at work: the discursive reclassification of spring typology, which narrowed the definition of hydrological risk and sidelined competing academic assessments; the structural realignment of the Agency’s mandate within Indonesia’s infrastructure-led development apparatus; and actor-level networks connecting GA personnel to cement industry interests, which constrained the institutional space for precautionary judgment. The contribution is theoretical: it extends capture theory in political ecology by showing industry alignment produced without capture, through networks and ministry structures that already blur public and private interest. The analysis points to the need for institutionalised independence, mandatory conflict-of-interest disclosure, and community-accessible audit mechanisms in state bodies whose technical assessments determine the fate of ecologically sensitive territories.