Introduction

Environmental Law With Non-Human Features in India: Giving Legal Personhood to the Ganges

“…Everywhere, the question then becomes who borrows from whom in these newly developed processes of law making. Partly inspired by Chiba (1986), Amirante and Bagni (2022: 3) stress the importance of ‘the cultural framework and paradigms lying behind’ law-making. Their volume confirms that mainstream discourses celebrate Latin American and Māori values, but tend to overlook, critique or simply dismiss comparable Indian concepts and developments.…”

“…In fact, Sharma (2002) specifically quotes a Hindu woman renouncer ( sadhvi ) who positioned the Tehri Dam issue in terms of the Hindu–Muslim struggle. Such understanding of the relations between Hindu nationalism and ecology is now permeated in the literature on the 2017 RoN case, failing to acknowledge India’s much earlier development of its own activist constitutionally inspired regime of environmental jurisprudence (Divan & Rosencranz, 2002), more recently discussed by Gill (2017) and Amirante & Bagni (2022).…”

“…Assessing the global growth of environmental constitutionalism in the anthropocene, the current era where man-made changes to natural phenomena create precarious climate change implications, Amirante & Bagni (2022) highlight the connectedness of values, principles and actions with regard to environmental protection. Like Kauffman & Martin (2021: 2), they show how numerous legal provisions recognising non-human components of ecosystems as legal subjects with rights have been developed, coining the concept of Rights of Nature (RoN).…”

“…Like Kauffman & Martin (2021: 2), they show how numerous legal provisions recognising non-human components of ecosystems as legal subjects with rights have been developed, coining the concept of Rights of Nature (RoN). Amirante & Bagni (2022) show that the often overlooked concept of granting legal rights to non-human entities has long been discussed in various legal cultures across the globe. Their edited volume also provides much coverage of Indian developments, which are globally underrated.…”

“…Thus, typically, Gordon (2018: 58) mentions India among countries that have developed RoN jurisprudence, but does not enlighten her readers, even through her references, to the rich Indian environmental jurisprudence that has existed since the 1980s. By contrast, Amirante & Bagni (2022) depict the Global South, particularly India, at the forefront of environmental constitutionalism.…”