Governing Through Courts? Law and the Political-Economy of Climate Change Litigation in Indonesia

Despite the global trend, climate change litigation in Southeast Asia has remained underexplored and has been given less attention within scholarly discourse. This article aims to contribute to the debate in the region by taking a critical stand in order to counter-balance the predominantly optimistic view of the efficacy of climate change litigation and to better determine the delimiting factors to climate litigation in addressing the climate crisis. In doing so, it examines three main cases representing climate litigation in Indonesia and argues that, in a country where the government pursues economic development based on a carbon-intensive economic growth model, climate litigation appears to be more challenging as it may pose a challenge to the existing political and economic model – the model that has caused the climate crisis in the first place. In fact, the courts, which are regarded as the last line of environmental defence, have also been influenced by this structural condition and has arguably taken up the role of guardian of this economic model.