Addressing Climate Change: The Imperative for a Robust Legal Framework in India

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most social legal challenges of our time and for future generation. Rule of law and climate changes are the two sides of a same coin because any legal or governance project thinking about the climate change impacts everything from access to food water, biodiversity, public health, land use and the basic human security as well as human rights. Climate change requires us to rethink who we are and how we coexist as national and international human beings. It challenges the integrity of social and legal system and demands that we think more broadly about how to engage the rule of law as an essential tool of climate change.States have a duty under general international law to act in such a way so as to prevent climate change or climate change beyond a particular threshold. Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. However, scientific advances progressively allow us to attribute an increase in morbidity and mortality to human-induced warming, and more accurately determine the risks and scale of these health threats.This paper explores the intersection between the international and national rule of law and climate change and also ongoing pressure on the rule of law to limit climate change.