A Critical and Generative Reading of the Evolution of Environmental Laws and Law-Making in India: Dr Arpitha Kodiveri (NYU)

A Critical and Generative Reading of the Evolution of Environmental Laws and Law-Making in India: Dr Arpitha Kodiveri (NYU)

In this seminar, I will trace the history and evolution of environmental law in India in three stages namely the origin of the environment, wildlife, and ecology as a subject of law and regulation, the emergence of environmental law as a site of contestation for inclusion by marginalized communities and lastly as a legal arena that has experienced several attempts of deregulation. This descriptive account of the evolution of environmental law is contrasted with the changing political economy of India since liberalization in 1991 and how that has, in turn, shaped the legal approaches to the making and implementation of environmental law in ways that prevent radical challenges to the growth-driven economic paradigm. This descriptive account provides a fertile terrain to analyze the changes in the relationship between the state, citizens, ecology, and economy in post-colonial India. The climate crisis demands that we revisit the role of environmental law and its ability to transform the existing extractive economy. In this seminar, I critically analyze the environmental law framework in India in its inadequacy in addressing climate change but draw from its progressive and generative legal approaches of opening the making and implementation of environmental law to be shaped by social movements on the ground and how this deliberative approach to lawmaking and implementation may offer alternative legal imaginaries in tackling the climate crisis. 

To attend please email: liz.fisher@law.ox.ac.uk