ENVIRONMENTAL LAW IN INDIA: POLLUTION CONTROL, CLIMATE CHANGE LAW, AND WILDLIFE PROTECTION

India occupies a unique and paradoxical position in global environmental governance. It is simultaneously one of the world's most biodiverse nations — home to approximately eight per cent of the world's recorded species, seventeen biodiversity hotspots, and some of the planet's most ecologically significant river systems, forests, wetlands, and coastal zones — and one of its most environmentally stressed. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion, rapid industrialisation, an agriculture sector under chronic pressure, and urbanisation proceeding at an unprecedented pace, India's natural environment faces pressures of extraordinary intensity. Air pollution in its major cities regularly reaches levels described by the World Health Organisation as hazardous; its rivers carry some of the highest pollutant loads in the world; its forest cover continues to decline despite legal protections; and its wildlife faces the combined threats of habitat loss, poaching, human-wildlife conflict, and the accelerating consequences of climate change. The legal response to these environmental challenges has been substantial in legislative ambition, if uneven in operational effectiveness. India has enacted a comprehensive framework of environmental legislation over the past five decades, encompassing pollution control, environmental impact assessment, forest protection, biodiversity conservation, and wildlife protection. The constitutional foundation of this framework — particularly the right to a healthy environment implied by Article 21 of the Constitution and the directive principles of state environmental stewardship under Articles 48A and 51A(g) — has been progressively elaborated by a Supreme Court that has, in the field of environmental law, been among the most activist in the world. India has also engaged substantively with the international climate regime, making commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement that have significant implications for its domestic legal and policy framework.