11 - Climate Change Adaptation Litigation: A View from Southeast Asia

Summary

Climate change poses serious adaptation challenges for countries in Southeast Asia, including how climate change impacts will be managed under environmental and planning law frameworks. At the same time. in Southeast Asia, climate change litigation involving questions of adaptation planning is at a nascent stage. There is also little research and scholarship on climate change legal developments in this part of the world. This chapter aims to evaluate prospects for adaptation-focused climate change litigation in Southeast Asia. It considers three key Southeast Asian jurisdictions – the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore – which illustrate differing levels of receptivity to such cases given their existing legal frameworks and litigation cultures. With climate litigation in general at an early stage in these jurisdictions, this chapter attempts to draw lessons for further development of this body of case law from the more developed climate adaptation jurisprudence in neighbouring Australia. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the necessary preconditions for growth of climate adaptation litigation in the Southeast Asian region.