Climate Change and Community Environmental Conflicts: Are They Correlated?

Climate change and global warming affect major change in freshwater availability and season uncertainty which hamper all part of the globe. Although the phenomenon is not new but it needs concerns from all the government of States around the world to address the problem. If notthe drought and water shortages will directly and indirectly be the world problem and finally will ignite conflict over resources.Pollution and environmental degradation will also affect the sustainability of community's economic activities. In Indonesia, since the enforcement of the first Environmental Management Act of 1982 up to the third Environmental Management Act of 2019, there have been forty one conflicts involving community and industries and palm plantation companies. All the conflicts are brought before the courts. Herein, industries and plantations are blamed for responsible for river water pollution and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, there is very little information in Indonesia obtained from the research reports, journals, news papers, magazines whether climate change and global warming also responsible for the occurrence of community environmental conflict. From the second data sources obtained from outsite Indonesia it is found that there is a link between climate change and community environmental disputes. The objectives of this paper tryto examine whether the cases submitted and solved by the District Courtsalso have some connection with the climate change phenomenon. Other objectives are to recommend to the Government of Indonesia to strengthen the existing regulations dealing with the climate change


INTRODUCTION
Up to 2009, the Indonesian Environmental Acts have undergone changes thrice 1 and within 27 years ,there had been at least 40 environmental disputes between the communities and the industries and plantations. Pollution and environmental degradation were blamed to be the cause of conflict. Pollution and environmental degradation impact on the disruption of the economic activity of the community. Bringing the disputes to the court is not the only alternative to be recommended for the judicial decisions has weaknesses 2 and power imbalanced between actors makes it difficult to reach environmental justice. 3 Conversely, looking at the 40 environmental disputes above, the court seems is the only alternative for solving the disputes. Consequently, this situation is in contra-  Context, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2009. pp 179-210. dictory to what had been mandated by the 2009 Law No. 23 on the Protection of and the Management of the Environment 4 which requires the party to employ mediation first before deciding to bring their case to the court. 5 The effectiveness of using mediation for environmental disputes is encouraged by the EMA 2009. Many scholars such as Crowfoot and Wondollect, 6 Bulland,7 Allen, 8 Nicholson,9 Straus,10 Crable 11 and Carpenter 12 suggested that mediation is best mechanism to solve environmental conflict. The United States, for example, is the country to which mediation has been used effectively to solve many environmental disputes. 13 Unfortunately, when one looks at the 40 cases above, industries and palm plantations are blamed to be the contributor for environmental pollution and environmental degradation. Whilst many studies concluded The objectives of this paper are to examine, from the secondary sources such as the decisions of the courts and also the court cases obtained from the books, research report and journals. In the context of climate change and the environmental disputes, the analysis stresses on the examination on the background of the disputes, when the disputes occur and also the verdicts of the district court. The writer also will examine the extent of the [ 56 ] Sriwijaya Law Review " Vol. 1 Issue 1, January (2017) Government of Indonesia anticipates the impact of the climate change on social life, economy and law. Prior coming to the discussion, this paper will start with urgent concern of climate change for Indonesia.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
In Indonesia, there is no follow-up studies on the effect of climate change on the community environmental disputes except the review of the global conservation organization 23 where climate change in Indonesia has impacted on the annual rainfall whichalready down by 2 to 3 per cent, and the seasons are changing. As a matter of fact, Indonesia, geographically, is one of the most vulnerable countries to the impact of climate change. This is because Indonesia is a country with high population density and high levels of biodiversity, and has 80,000kilometres of coastline and 17,500 islands big and small. In the paper presented by Michael Case, Fitrian Ardiansyah, Emily Spector 24 that the climate change has impact on water availability, sealevel rise, biodiversity and ecosystem services, human health and vulnerability and adaptation.
Although phenomenon of climate change has occur long time ago, 25 and is not considered as the 21 th the world problem, the Government of Indonesia has anticipated the 23  In regard to the issue above, there are two international conferences on climate change The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. The Summit has successfully produced the commitment of the world com-\munity to adopt an agreement on climate change through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) (UNFCCC). This commitment is urgent since the climate change has affected the whole parts of the world including Indonesia. The IPCC data (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 29 reported that the world within the period of 100 years, the global average of the world climate, increased 0.74° F ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) which effect on the elevation of sea level in all parts of the world. For example, in the 21 st century, the sea level has increased from 9-88 cm (4-35 inches). If the increase of sea level reaches 40 inches (100 cm) therefore it will sink 6% of territory of the Netherland, 17, 5% of Bangladesh. 30 Furthermore, the coastal area of Indonesia, where the level of the territory is the same with the above countries will have hampered the same problem. Legal consequence is it will also affect the territorial border of Indonesia as a whole. Climate change is expected to bring about major change in freshwater availability, the productive capacity of soils, and in patterns of human settlement. However, considerable uncertainties exist with regard to the extent and geographical distribution of these changes. Predicting scenarios for how climate-related environmental change may influence human societies and political systems necessarily involves an even higher degree of uncertainty. The direst predictions about the impacts of global warming warn about greatly increased risks of violent conflict over increasingly scarce resources such as freshwater and arable land.
One should notice that the world population explosion within the next 15 years will also affect the reduction on the renewable resources, freshwater availability, the size of agricultural areas, forest areas, and also some species will also reduce and dwindled or distinct. 32 Consequently, there should have been environmental conflicts in many parts of the world. There are six types of environmental change were identified as plausible causes of violent intergroup conflict. Those types are greenhouse-induced climate change; stratospheric ozone depletion; degradation and loss of good agricultural land; degradation and removal of forests; depletion and pollution of fresh 31 Clionadh Raleigh, Henrik Urdal,2007 [ 58 ] Sriwijaya Law Review " Vol. 1 Issue 1, January (2017) water supplies; and depletion of fisheries. 33 Population growth and resource scarcity are as causes of the conflict between the Sandinista government and the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua. 34 Although in Indonesia, there is little information on the studies dealing with the community environmental disputes as a result of scarcity of the resources with the climate change. In fact, community environmental disputes in Indonesia have emerged on the surface since the application of the EMA 1982, the EMA 1997 and the EMA 2009 is they are provided for in the following Table I.
The Table I illustrates that all community environmental dispute start from pollution and environmental degradation, ZKLFK HYHQWXDOO\ DIIHFW WKH SHRSOH ¶V livelihood. Most of the victims are poor peasants, whose livelihood depends on farming activities. 33 Thomas F. Homer-Dixon. Note 32. 34 Thomas F. Homer-Dixon. Note 32.
The climate uncertainty as the impact of global climate change may be long drought and long wet season. Nevertheless, it may happen the long drought season and short wet season, vice versa. The community in general and the farmers in particular use the river water for daily consumption as well as the industry uses the river as waste disposal. The long drought may cause the volume of river water reduced. As a result the water cannot neutralize the pollutants that dispose to the river. The correlation of global climate change will be easily understood if to illustrate through the diagram 1.
In other words, resources scarcity may end up in the conflict among or between the stakeholders whose dependence on the water or the river. The figure 1 bellow explains that dependency. 35 [ 59 ]