Using the Law

As a non-government organization in Indonesia, WALHI has pioneered the use of legal suits and class action cases to make authorities and companies accountable for their negative impacts on communities and the environment. In a country where corruption, bribery and abuse of the legal system is rampant, communities can feel powerless and unable to seek retribution for the loss of land and property, health impacts and social problems which arise from mining, forestry and other industrial activities. WALHI helps to facilitate legal actions for local communities as well as lodging cases on behalf of the environment. Even if defects in Indonesia’s legal systems pervert the course of justice, lodging such cases puts a spotlight on destructive corporate activities and helps to progress the Indonesian judiciary slowly away from corruption and towards impartiality.

Some break through cases WALHI has lodged on behalf of the environment or facilitated for local communities include:

• Pollution and environmental destruction charges filed in 1988 against five government bodies and a pulp mill (PT. Inti Indorayon Utama). This case was the first time the legal standing rights of an environmental organization had been tested. The Central Jakarta State Court acknowledged the rights of WALHI as an environment organization to file a lawsuit on behalf of the environment. This case set a precedent and numerous following environmental cases involving legal standing rights have led to the explicit acknowledgement of legal standing rights within the text of the Environmental Management Act No. 23 Year 1997.
  
• The case of the Koto Panjang Dam Project in West Sumatra which was built with a 31.177 billion Yen loan from the Japanese government. Joining the class action lawsuit filed by 8,397 affected people against the Japanese government and loan agencies involved, WALHI filed a lawsuit on behalf of the environment. The suit demanded the Japanese government rehabilitate the environment and wildlife habitats destroyed as a result of the Kotopanjang Dam development project. This lawsuit was accepted by the Tokyo Court, marking a historical precedent in the Japanese legal system and the first time a lawsuit filed by an Indonesian environment group had been accepted by the legal system of another country.
• In 2003, WALHI and 3 other groups, made a legal intervention in the ongoing court case between the Indonesian Environment Minister and a number of companies involved with a coastline reclamation project.
  The project plans to expand Jakarta's northern coastline with an extra 2,700 hectares of reclaimed land over an expanse of coastland as long as 32 kilometers. WALHI predicted the project would worsen annual flooding, soil degradation, local people’s access to clean water and encroach on an existing nature reserve.

After pressure from WALHI, the Environment Minister had issued a Decree stating the project was not feasible due to its impacts. Incredibly, the companies responsible for the reclamation project then sued the Environment Minister.

The pioneering intervention submitted and granted to WALHI and the three other groups allowed them to put up a defense for the Ministerial Decree and the environment.
In an effort to uphold peoples’ civil-political rights, WALHI has also facilitated legal defense for communities who have been criminally prosecuted in their efforts to reclaim their rights over livelihood sources.

Source : http://www.eng.walhi.or.id/kampanye/psda/gugatan/using_law_info/