Climate Justice and Environmental Law Reform in Developing Countries

Climate change has become a multidimensional crisis that has imposed the heaviest impacts on developing countries, despite their relatively small historical contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions compared to developed industrial countries. This inequality has given rise to the concept of climate justice as a normative framework that demands a fair distribution of environmental responsibilities, benefits, and burdens between developed and developing countries. This article aims to analyze how the concept of climate justice can be integrated into environmental law reform in developing countries, highlighting the structural failures of the existing legal framework and formulating a direction for reform that is more responsive to the principles of intergenerational and interregional justice. This research uses normative juridical methods with legislative, conceptual, and comparative legal approaches to several jurisdictions in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Indonesia. The results of the study indicate that weak law enforcement, limited access to human rights-based litigation, and the absence of an adequate corporate accountability framework are the main obstacles to achieving climate justice in developing countries. This article recommends strengthening the rule of law, harmonizing environmental law with international human rights instruments, and establishing a just energy transition mechanism as a foundation for environmental law reform oriented towards climate justice.

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