What Might Future Rights-Based Climate Litigation Look Like in Indonesia? A Preliminary Analysis.

This article examines the current state and future prospects of rights-based climate litigation in Indonesia, highlighting the absence of such cases despite some environmental rights litigation having been pursued with limited success. It analyzes two main types of Indonesian climate-related litigation—cases addressing illegal logging and forest fires with climate damage compensation claims, and administrative lawsuits challenging environmental permits for failing to consider climate change impacts in Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA). The article underscores challenges in establishing legal standing and the limited judicial receptiveness to human rights arguments, noting that successful rights-based environmental cases often rely on corroborating evidence such as reports from Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Drawing on the Dutch Urgenda case, it suggests that incorporating authoritative climate science, like Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, alongside human rights inquiry reports, may strengthen future rights-based climate claims in Indonesia, although judicial outcomes remain uncertain given local legal and political contexts.