Archives: Book Chapters

Law is at the center of policy and political issues concerning water. Yet, until relatively recently, water law has often been either sidestepped or considered only through limited lenses in international policy debates. This is changing rapidly, in part because increasing economic, social, and physical scarcity of water is fostering increasing conflicts over access to water. This has led to increasing attention to water law and to significant water law reforms. This chapter provides an overview of the basic structure of water law and analyzes recent reforms, with a focus on developments in India where legal reform has been a central part of water-sector reforms. It highlights some of the most contentious issues surrounding legal reforms, in particular the tension between equity and justice, on the one hand, and efficiency and willingness to pay on the other hand, as well as the broader issue of privatization.

This chapter explores the human rights implications of various provisions in the international climate change regime. In particular, it examines, in forensic detail, the human rights recital in the preamble of the Paris Agreement, the first explicit reference to human rights in the climate change regime. It does so with a view to exposing the contestations and possibilities between and beyond the text of the Paris Agreement.

Through assessing climate disaster law in relation to international, public, private and environmental law this Research Handbook considers the unique challenges, barriers and opportunities that climate disasters pose for law and policy. Scientific and empirical evidence suggests that the laws addressing natural disasters cannot be adequately applied to disasters that are caused by climate change. Featuring contributions from leading international experts, this Research Handbook will be a useful resource for those with an interest in environmental law and international policymaking.

With the advent of liberalization in the 1990s, South Asian economies began freeing up trade, aspiring to ‘develop’ at faster rates by widespread urbanization, chasing living standards of the West and pushing indigenous cultures away into corners. This process benefited from the pace of globalization, causing a marked increase in consumerism. While the middle- and high-income classes were placed such that they enjoyed the fruits of ‘development’, the lower income strata bore most of the burden. Using case studies, the chapter attempts to show how unsustainable and conflictual exploitation of resources has been the central cause of maldevelopment in this region, leading to environmental damage as well as wide inequalities in sharing the burdens and benefits of such development. However, it is remarkable that there have been numerous South Asian philosophical sources and people’s justice movements which have addressed issues of maldevelopment by integrating human and environmental values, a move necessary for any form of worthwhile development.

The current international climate change regime has a long history, and it is likely that its evolution will continue, despite such recent setbacks as the decision by President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement of 2015. Indeed, the U.S. withdrawal may spur efforts by other members of the international community to strengthen the Paris accord on their own. This volume offers an original contribution to the study of the international political context of climate change over the last three decades, with fresh analyses of the current international climate change regime that consider both the challenges of maintaining current structures and the possibilities for creating new forms of international cooperation. In this chapter, Bodansky and Rajamani examine the COPs of the UNFCCC to see if it remains an important forum, or if it will tend to be superseded recently by initiatives emanating from the G7 or the G20. The authors also provide an overview of the Paris Agreement, including the avenues of further elaboration of the agreement.

Environmental law principles, such as the polluter pays, the precautionary principle or the common but differentiated responsibilities, have had a very important function in the shaping and evolution of the young sector of environmental law which has developed over the last fifty years. Yet, their status, content, binding force and functions in law remain largely uncertain. Forming a key part of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law, this book examines the facets of environmental principles in international, national and regional law, as applied in different parts of the world and by a variety of courts. It assembles more than fifty contributions from all continents which clarify that, as the environment itself has no voice and cannot express its concerns, there is an overriding importance of scholars’ active discussion of environmental principles. The book demonstrates that the necessity to preserve this planet requires a continuous, democratic discussion of values, objectives and concepts which are expressed in the numerous and continuously evolving environmental principles.

Punjab’s power sector, known for its agricultural embeddedness and chronic subsidy challenges, was one of the least attractive and pragmatic choices for reform advocates. Considering a feeble external push and forceful internal resistance, the state has undertaken partial electricity reforms to comply with legislative mandates from the central government. Despite limited reforms, Punjab has made substantive progress on electricity access, quality of supply, and some operational efficiencies. This chapter analyses how the power sector has evolved in Punjab, especially through institutional restructuring and policy reforms, with the objective to examine the policy choices, outcomes, winners, and losers at the state level. It analyses the political–economic drivers for these policy choices and how they deviate from or comply with signals from the central government. Building on these findings, it also discusses the implications of past experiences and prevailing power dynamics for ongoing and future reforms.

Electricity reforms in Madhya Pradesh remain underreported, despite some atypical outcomes. This chapter examines the political economy of transitions in MP’s power sector, with the objective of identifying drivers of policy choices and their outcomes. Drawing on the findings, this paper explains how intensive institutional restructuring has resulted in bureaucratization and consolidated state control over the sector, and discusses the resulting outcomes. It also analyses the implications of past experiences for ongoing and future reforms.

Andhra Pradesh’s experience with electricity reforms and their political ramifications has not only been fascinating a case for political analysts, but also have influenced reform approaches in other states. This chapter explores the political economy of AP’s electricity sector transitions over four periods, with the objective to explain the drivers of policy choices and their outcomes. Drawing on the findings, it discusses the transformations in electricity reform strategy over two phases of reforms and analyses the implications of past experiences for ongoing reforms in the sector.

In this chapter, part of the volume titled People on the Move: Advancing the Discourse on Migration & Jobs, we investigate the phenomenon of work-related migration and find that while expected wage differentials between the rural and urban can be an incentive for movement, this potential migration is hindered by the loss of social protection, the architecture of which is often tied to location and not portable. While wages are a challenging area for governments to intervene, we argue that greater attention to social protection could offer a supportive mechanism for rural-urban migrants and improve their access to urban work. Such access to social protection could reduce migration costs and affect pro-work migration choices – for example, favoring longer-term migration over short-term and seasonal movements. Further, we argue that there are particular opportunities in the current architecture of social protection that can be tapped with relative ease – for example, in reaching out to the large body of migrant construction workers.