The Bill on Climate Change Management and the Missing “Emergency” Status

By Leonyta Nugroho

19 Mar 2026 04:41 WIB 19 March 2026 04:41 WIB 4 minutes reading time: 4 minutes 3 read

The Bill on Climate Change Management neglects victims and corporate accountability. This regulation has the potential to legitimize climate damage.

RUU Pengelolaan Perubahan Iklim: respons memadai atau sekadar bahasa dingin di tengah krisis yang mendesak? (Source: AI Gemini, Redaksi Literasi Hukum Indonesia)

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Table of Contents

The Problem of the Terminology "Management" that Covers Up the Crisis
Absence of Victims and Structure
Who Pays?
Reducing the Crisis to a Market Mechanism

Baca tanpa iklan.

Gabung Membership

Section 3/3: Reducing the Crisis to a Market Mechanism

Reducing the Crisis to a Market Mechanism

Instead of encouraging a drastic reduction in emissions, this Bill actually reduces climate control to merely a matter of Carbon Economic Value (CEV) and carbon trading. This approach turns the ecological crisis into a market transaction.

The carbon trading scheme risks becoming a "false solution" that allows large polluters to continue emitting as long as they can buy "permits" to pollute. In this logic, polluting is no longer seen as a violation of ethics and law, but as something that can be paid for with money.

Substantively, the Climate Change Bill is not yet adequate as a foundation for climate justice, because it focuses more on the regulative, coordinative, and facilitative functions of market mechanisms. Public participation is also passively limited, only as advisors or social supervisors, without active involvement in every stage of decision-making.

This shows that this Bill is positioned more as a tool for legitimizing government policies than as an instrument of protection for vulnerable citizens.

If a climate change law does not begin with the recognition of victims and real accountability from climate destroyers, then it is not an instrument of justice, but merely an administrative framework for managing a crisis that continues to be allowed to happen. Fundamental change is absolutely necessary so that the law is truly on the side of the people's safety, not on market interests.