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Environmental Movements and Law
Abstract
This Handbook is a response to the rapid growth of environmental and natural resources law over the past few decades in India. The discipline is now a distinct field of research and teaching. A Handbook focused on India is required because the country has been at the forefront of jurisprudential developments among countries with similar environmental, geographical, socio-economic, and cultural conditions. Concurrently, India has been receptive to ideas and principles coming from other parts of the world or from international law. The growth of environmental and natural resources law in India is sustained in part by growing environmental awareness and in part by the increasingly dire nature of the problems relating to the environment and natural resources, from local issues to the global climate crisis. At the same time, the continuous push for development has not abated, leading to recurrent pressure to weaken existing standards for environmental protection and the use and management of natural resources. This Handbook brings together the multiple strands that make up the diverse and complex area of environmental and natural resources law. It departs from the existing approach that treats the fields of natural resources law and environmental law separately and offers the much-needed integrated analysis of both with all its complexities.
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This article reviews the theoretical concept of ‘sustainable adaptation’ to climate
change and water scarcity using a gender-relations approach by answering the
following questions: i) What is a sustainable adaptation to climate change? ii)
Based on a literature review, how does gender interact with climate change ad�aptation to water scarcity and droughts in rural India? (iii) How do the concepts
of sustainable adaptation, degrowth, and gender relations interact on the ground,
pertaining to water justice?
The paper argues that climate change adaptation and development goals can
harmonize only if they rectify root causes of vulnerabilities. For adaptation ac�tions to yield sustainable outcomes, they need to be embedded in a just degrowth
politics that transforms unequal power relations, including gender relations with
water. In India, degrowth is about ecological, economic, and social justice that
calls for transformation of the economy. This transformation looks into the life�cycle of goods - how goods are produced, composed, assembled, distributed,
consumed, and regenerated today; further degrowth strategy explores alternate,
just, non-extractive, decolonial, and democratically led trajectories that sustain
the web of life. This paper discusses five interrelated principles of sustainable
degrowth-based adaptation that center on community-based notions of water
and gender justice.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which the existence of a polycentric climate governance regime in Pakistan has enabled diverse framings of climate justice to emerge and be operationalized within policymaking. A two-part analysis is conducted through systematic coding and textual analysis of interview transcripts and policy documents. Firstly, an analysis based on climate justice framings reveals that, whilst national governmental actors predominantly adopt an international framing of climate justice, non-state actors have increasingly adopted vulnerability, human rights and transformational framings of justice, thereby supporting the theory that polycentricity is widening the space for voicing diverse framings. Secondly, a polycentric governance-based analysis reveals that several institutional barriers limit the ability of non-state actors to operationalize these framings, particularly capacity and resource constraints, limits of scale and scope, changing legislation and the unequivocal power held by the state. Hence, Pakistan’s overarching climate change strategy prioritizes justice between countries, while obscuring domestic inequalities, poverty and vulnerability, which are only addressed by non-state actors through isolated activities rather than in a coordinated manner within national policy. This finding suggests that polycentric governance can diversify climate discourse, but also that the intergovernmental climate regime may reinforce the nation state’s international framings of justice at the expense of domestic justice concerns.
Key policy insights
• Non-state actors within the polycentric climate governance regime in Pakistan are increasingly adopting framings of climate justice beyond those of the nation state, thereby bringing attention to issues of domestic poverty, inequality and vulnerability.
• Differences in power between state and non-state actors limit the extent to which different justice issues can be addressed through nationally and internationally-led climate policy.
• There are limitations to the ability of national-level polycentric climate governance regimes, when embedded in intergovernmental negotiations, to engage in redistributing power and advocating for different framings and dimensions of justice being raised by local actors.
This book provides the first systematic critique of the concept of climate change adaptation within the field of international development. Drawing on a reworked political ecology framework, it argues that climate is not something ‘out there’ that we adapt to. Instead, it is part of the social and biophysical forces through which our lived environments are actively yet unevenly produced. From this original foundation, the book challenges us to rethink the concepts of climate change, vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity in transformed ways. With case studies drawn from Pakistan, India and Mongolia, it demonstrates concretely how climatic change emerges as a dynamic force in the ongoing transformation of contested rural landscapes. In crafting this synthesis, the book recalibrates the frameworks we use to envisage climatic change in the context of contemporary debates over development, livelihoods and poverty.
The emergence of transnational social movements as major actors in international politics - as witnessed in Seattle in 1999 and elsewhere - has sent shockwaves through the international system. Many questions have arisen about the legitimacy, coherence and efficiency of the international order in the light of the challenges posed by social movements. This ground-breaking book offers a fundamental critique of twentieth-century international law from the perspective of Third World social movements - the first ever to do so. It examines in detail the growth of two key components of modern international law - international institutions and human rights - in the context of changing historical patterns of Third World resistance. Using a historical and interdisciplinary approach, Rajagopal presents compelling evidence challenging current debates on the evolution of norms and institutions, the meaning and nature of the Third World, as well as the political economy of its involvement in the international system.
Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
The human and environmental consequences of big development projects such as large dams have been a focus of increasing attention in many countries. Large-scale involuntary resettlement caused by such projects has become particularly contentious in a number of situations. In India where many large dams have been and are being built, the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river has been at the centre of a storm for over a decade. The latest development in the history of this project is the judgment given by the Supreme Court of India on 18 October 2000 adjudicating a public interest litigation petition filed by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA—Save the Narmada Movement). This decision is of great significance not only for the project itself but also from a broader perspective.
- Usha Natarajan
- Kishan Khoday
Usha Natarajan and Kishan Khoday, ʻLocating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Lawʼ
(2014) 27 Leiden Journal of International Law 573; Nayak (n 1) 250.
Arun Kumar Nayak, ʻBig Dams and Protests in India: A Study of Hirakud Damʼ
- Krishna Mallick
Krishna Mallick, Environmental Movements of India: Chipko, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Navdanya (Amsterdam University
Press 2021); Arun Kumar Nayak, ʻBig Dams and Protests in India: A Study of Hirakud Damʼ (2010) 45(2) Economic and
Political Weekly 69.
- Kishor Kumar
Kishor Kumar Podh, ʻMaladies of Development in India-Protest against Large Scale Dams: A Case of Hirakud Damʼ (2015)
2(4) International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding 11, 20.
- Emma Mawdsley
Emma Mawdsley, ʻA er Chipko: From Environment to Region in Uttaranchalʼ (1998) 25(4) The Journal of Peasant Studies
36.
- Bina Agarwal
- ʻthe Gender
- Environment Debate
Bina Agarwal, ʻThe Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from Indiaʼ (1992) 18(1) Feminist Studies 119; Mawdsley (n
24) 147.
- Balakrishnan Rajagopal
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, ʻThe Role of Law in Counter-Hegemonic Globalization and Global Legal Pluralism: Lessons from
the Narmada Valley Struggle in Indiaʼ (2005) 18(3) Leiden Journal of International Law 345, 364.
The Sardar Sarovar Dam Project: Selected Documents
- Philippe Cullet
Philippe Cullet, The Sardar Sarovar Dam Project: Selected Documents (Routledge 2007) 2; Mallick (n 21) 68-71.
the Forest Rights Act, and the Performance(s) of Proofʼ in
- Prakruti Ramesh
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Prakruti Ramesh, ʻRural Industry, the Forest Rights Act, and the Performance(s) of Proofʼ in Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Patrik
Oskarsson (eds), Industrialising Rural India: Land, Policy and Resistance (Routledge 2016) 162.
State-Led Development to Embedded Neoliberalism: Indiaʼs Industrial and Social Policies in Comparative Perspectiveʼ in
- Stein Sundstøl Eriksen
Stein Sundstøl Eriksen, ʻFrom State-Led Development to Embedded Neoliberalism: Indiaʼs Industrial and Social Policies in
Comparative Perspectiveʼ in Nielsen and Oskarsson (eds) (n 53) 46.
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Robyn Bartel, ʻVernacular Knowledge and Environmental Law: Cause and Cure for Regulatory Failureʼ (2014) 19(8) Local
Environment 891.
Colonial-era legislation including the ʻIndian Forest Act, 1927, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980-di er in their priorities and approachesʼ that continue to marginalize tribal communities. See Ramesh (n 52) 161
- Joan Roy
- Martinez-Alier
Colonial-era legislation including the ʻIndian Forest Act, 1927, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and the Forest
Conservation Act, 1980-di er in their priorities and approachesʼ that continue to marginalize tribal communities. See
Ramesh (n 52) 161; Roy and Joan Martinez-Alier (n 1) 83.
- Glyn Williams
- Emma Mawdsley
Glyn Williams and Emma Mawdsley, ʻPostcolonial Environmental Justice: Government and Governance in Indiaʼ (2006)
37(5) Geoforum 660, 664.
- Vandana Shiva
- H Afsar
- Jafri
- Bubble
Vandana Shiva and Afsar H Jafri, ʻBursting the GM Bubble: The Failure of GMOs in Indiaʼ (2003) 11(3) The Ecologist Asia 6;
Beyond Dead Democracy and Killing Economiesʼ (2010) 21 Capitalism Nature Socialism 83
- Vandana Shiva
- Democracy ʻearth
Vandana Shiva, ʻEarth Democracy: Beyond Dead Democracy and Killing Economiesʼ (2010) 21 Capitalism Nature Socialism
83;
Postcolonial Histories of the Conceptʼ in
- K Gurminder
- ʻthe Bhambra
- State
Gurminder K Bhambra, ʻThe State: Postcolonial Histories of the Conceptʼ in Olivia U Rutazibwa and Robbie Shilliam
(eds), Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics (1st edn, Routledge 2018) 200-209;
Global Poverty, and Scales of (in)Justice: Rethinking Law and Poverty in a Globalizing Worldʼ
- Nancy Fraser
- Exclusion
Nancy Fraser, ʻSocial Exclusion,
Global Poverty, and Scales of (in)Justice: Rethinking Law and Poverty in a Globalizing Worldʼ (2011) 22(3) Stellenbosch Law
Review 452.
Flachs (n 64);
Navsharan Singh, ʻAgrarian Crisis and the Longest Farmersʼ Protest in Indian Historyʼ (2021) 30(3) New Labor Forum 66
- Jodhka
Jodhka (n 77) 1360-1362; Navsharan Singh, ʻAgrarian Crisis and the Longest Farmersʼ Protest in Indian Historyʼ (2021)
30(3) New Labor Forum 66.
42) 57; María Arquero de Alarcón and others, ʻDAM[N]ED: Mechanizing a Sacred River Landscape Redrawing Territorial Systems in the Narmada River Valleyʼ
- Gönenç
Gönenç (n 42) 57; María Arquero de Alarcón and others, ʻDAM[N]ED: Mechanizing a Sacred River Landscape Redrawing
Territorial Systems in the Narmada River Valleyʼ (2018) New Instrumentalities 341.
That transgresses single axis politics of exclusion towards an intersectional praxis, by considering power relations of gender, caste, class, ethnicity, and other contextual factors. See Spade (n 94) 1046-1051
- Sumi Cho
- Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
- Leslie Mccall
That transgresses single axis politics of exclusion towards an intersectional praxis, by considering power relations of
gender, caste, class, ethnicity, and other contextual factors. See Spade (n 94) 1046-1051; Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams
Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, ʻToward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory Applications and Praxisʼ (2013) 38 Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society 785.