Japan’s Yokosuka Climate Case

A Focus on Standing to Sue

Abstract

Climate change litigation has emerged in courts worldwide, including in Japan. This paper analyzes the standing issue in Japanese climate change litigation by examining the Yokosuka Climate case. While global courts often adopt a liberal approach to standing in climate cases, enabling substantive judgments on corporate behavior and government policies, Japanese courts are likely to interpret standing narrowly based on the conventional standing doctrine. The Tōkyō District Court and the Tōkyō High Court rulings in the Yokosuka Climate case exemplify this approach. The Tōkyō District Court distinguished between air pollutants and greenhouse gases, assuming the application of the conventional standing doctrine. Under this dichotomy, the court granted standing only related to air pollution from air pollutants while denying standing concerning greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The Tōkyō High Court upheld this decision.

This paper challenges this dichotomy by examining its two grounds, while still operating within the framework of the conventional standing doctrine in Japan. First, it argues that the Tōkyō District Court’s interpretation is inaccurate and inappropriate. When considering the BAE – a superior and related law – air pollutants and greenhouse gases are fundamentally equivalent in their potential to damage human health and the living environment.

Second, this paper examines the Tōkyō District Court’s reliance on a distance-centered view for identifying “core beneficiaries,” which is the essence of the specific interest. It argues that distance should not be the only indicator for identifying “core beneficiaries” in climate change litigation. Accordingly, other factors should also be considered. Regardless of their distance from the project site, individuals who face increased disaster risks due to climate change should be acknowledged as core beneficiaries and granted standing. Based on this reasoning, the paper also challenges the “drop in the ocean” argument advanced in the Tōkyō High Court’s decision.