IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v131y2023ics0264837723002053.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can green tribunals help to resist neo-liberalism in environmental governance – The case of India

Author

Listed:
  • Rao, Neethi Varadaraja
  • Bhaskaran, Varsha
  • Nagendra, Harini

Abstract

Establishing the environmental rule of law has been identified as a precondition to achieving sustainable development. Increasingly however norms around environmental sustainability are being eroded by rising neoliberalism. Within countries, especially developing countries these trends are creating tensions for environmental policy-making that often require adjudication/judicial intervention. In this paper, we use the case of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), situated in a rising economy - India to understand how it operates amidst these tensions, restricting our analysis to pre-COVID-19 to minimise confounding effects of the pandemic. We find that the limited jurisdiction allows the NGT to continue to uphold the principles of environmental sustainability. The NGT is able to serve as an indicator of the kinds of environmental issues cropping up, deliver environmental justice and improve governance. However, there are visible tensions driven by the larger political economy of environmental policymaking in India that pose a significant systemic challenge to the effectiveness of the NGT. Given the resurgence of economic imperatives in post-pandemic policymaking, the NGT and other similar environmental courts/tribunals across the globe, need to draw on sources of strength established pre-pandemic to uphold environmental rule of law going forward.

Suggested Citation

  • Rao, Neethi Varadaraja & Bhaskaran, Varsha & Nagendra, Harini, 2023. "Can green tribunals help to resist neo-liberalism in environmental governance – The case of India," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:131:y:2023:i:c:s0264837723002053
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106739
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837723002053
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106739?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerald Taylor Aiken & Lucie Middlemiss & Susannah Sallu & Richard Hauxwell‐Baldwin, 2017. "Researching climate change and community in neoliberal contexts: an emerging critical approach," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(4), July.
    2. Chara Vavoura & Ioannis Vavouras, 2022. "Sustainable economic development in the European Union and COVID-19," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 449-467, April.
    3. Narong Kiettikunwong, 2019. "The Green Bench: Can an environmental court protect natural resources in Thailand?," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 385-404, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rui Zhou, 2022. "Sustainable Economic Development, Digital Payment, and Consumer Demand: Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Gerald Taylor Aiken, 2017. "The politics of community: Togetherness, transition and post-politics," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(10), pages 2383-2401, October.
    3. Emily Creamer & Simon Allen & Claire Haggett, 2019. "‘Incomers’ leading ‘community-led’ sustainability initiatives: A contradiction in terms?," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(5), pages 946-964, August.
    4. Bregje van Veelen, 2020. "Caught in the middle? Creating and contesting intermediary spaces in low-carbon transitions," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(1), pages 116-133, February.
    5. Li, Hao & Wang, Zhao-Hua & Zhang, Bin, 2023. "How social interaction induce energy-saving behaviors in buildings: Interpersonal & passive interactions v.s. public & active interactions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    6. Gerald Taylor Aiken, 2019. "Community as tool for low carbon transitions: Involvement and containment, policy and action," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(4), pages 732-749, June.
    7. Genus, A. & Iskandarova, M., 2020. "Transforming the energy system? Technology and organisational legitimacy and the institutionalisation of community renewable energy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:131:y:2023:i:c:s0264837723002053. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.