Citizen Lawsuits: An Instrument for Environmental Law Enforcement in Addressing Air Pollution in Urban Areas

Abstract

Urban air pollution has become one of the most persistent environmental governance failures in rapidly industrializing states, and Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, is a leading example of the gap between regulatory ambition and enforcement reality. Command-and-control instruments under Law No. 32 of 2009 on Environmental Protection and Management have proven insufficient to compel government compliance with ambient air quality standards, leaving citizens to seek redress through the courts. This article examines the citizen lawsuit (gugatan warga negara) as an instrument of environmental law enforcement, using the 2019-2023 Jakarta air pollution litigation as its central case study and situating it within a comparative family of citizen-enforcement mechanisms, including China's environmental public interest litigation, Germany's and Poland's ENGO-led smog litigation, and the United States' statutory citizen suit provisions. Employing normative juridical methodology with statute, conceptual, case, and comparative approaches, the study finds that while Indonesian courts have progressively affirmed citizens' legal standing and the government's negligence, a persistent post-judgment compliance gap undermines the instrument's enforcement value. The article's novelty lies in identifying execution and judicial monitoring design, rather than standing doctrine alone, as the decisive variable explaining cross-jurisdictional differences in citizen lawsuit effectiveness, and in proposing a structural reform agenda for Indonesia accordingly.