Climate Change Litigation in the Anthropocene Era: Urgency and Challenges

Human activities have caused changes in Earth's systems, indicating that the planet has entered the Anthropocene era. One of the environmental issues arising in this era is climate change. The judiciary plays a crucial role in addressing this issue through climate change litigation mechanisms. This research aims to analyze the urgency of climate change litigation in the Anthropocene era and to examine the prospects and challenges of climate change litigation in Indonesia. The research method used in this article is doctrinal legal research. The findings of this study indicate that climate change litigation in the Anthropocene era holds urgency and significance. The active role of the judiciary is essential given the fact that other branches of power are less effective in handling climate change issues. In Indonesia, effective climate change litigation has occurred in cases related to illegal logging and peatland fires as well as one case related to a lawsuit against an environmental permit. However, these successes demonstrate that there are prospects for climate change litigation in Indonesia in the future. Challenges for climate change litigation in Indonesia include: first, when climate change is strictly framed as a primary issue in lawsuits, there are barriers in proving causality. Second, when litigation uses human rights arguments, based on existing practices, human rights-based claims in climate change litigation are still difficult to accept, and human rights considerations are often overlooked by the judges. Finally, there are challenges in constructing national legal norms as well as existing international law related to climate change, both for plaintiffs and the judiciary.