environmental-law

International environmental law governs environmental protection, transboundary harm, shared resources, and global environmental risks through treaties, customary international law, and general international law. This article explains prevention, precaution, environmental impact assessment, sustainable development, major treaty regimes, compliance, and State responsibility.

When the Trump administration unlawfully terminated the Solar for All program in 2025, it denied communities across the country an innovative funding model that would have provided them with affordable solar energy and good jobs.  One of the grant recipients, Inclusive Prosperity Capital, was planning on using its Solar for All grant to help expand […]

Plaintiffs are continuing to press the Trump administration in federal court to restore $3 billion in grant funding for environmental and climate justice programs that would benefit underserved communities, as a Sept. 30 deadline nears. The plaintiffs in the litigation over the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant program filed a motion late Tuesday asking […]

Aathi Thiruvaranga Pandiyan, The Central Law College, Salem ABSTRACT The rapid, largely unregulated expansion of synthetic athletic surfaces across schools, colleges, municipal grounds, and professional stadia has generated a contested but increasingly urgent public health question: does prolonged contact with artificial turf, and in particular its crumb-rubber infill, expose players to carcinoge…

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from challenging California’s longstanding authority to set vehicle pollution stan tdadards stricter than federal requirements. The legal dispute stems from a decision announced in June by EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who said the agency had determined that four of California’s Clean Air Act preemption waivers […]

There’s a lot of concern about how the Supreme Court’s opinion in the ballroom case could impact environmental law.  In the majority’s view, the problem was that the plaintiff lacked standing.  The concern is that the Court may have cut back standing doctrine in a way that will block many environmental cases.  You never know what the Court might do down the road, but I think the opinion itself is…

These international environmental law notes explain the field’s main sources, principles, treaties, cases, compliance mechanisms, and rules of State responsibility. They are designed for study, revision, examinations, and legal research.

A federal judge has struck down New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, ruling that it “conflicts with” federal authority.   The legislation would have required fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of adapting to climate change, but it operates in an area of the law “in which the federal interest is so dominant that […]

Mosa. Sejuti Khatun, Md. Al Amin & Sanzida Ali Sharmi ABSTRACT Road traffic crashes are an acute issue, that touches on aspects of legality, public health, development and economics. Bangladesh continues to struggle to reduce traffic crash fatalities, injuries and overall impacts on vulnerable road users. This article reviews Bangladesh’s legal and institutional approaches to road safety, hig…

Ambika Aggarwal, North Cap University ABSTRACT Public International law was designed by and for sovereign states. Corporations, including the small cluster of investor-owned entities responsible for a disproportionate share of historical greenhouse gas emissions, have traditionally occupied the status of objects rather than subjects of that legal order, and therefore bear no direct legal obligati…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo recently adopted a necessary national legal system on the protection of human rights defenders, which now complements the Protection and Responsibility of Human Rights Defenders law and its ministerial implementing decree of 2024. Provincial protection frameworks were adopted earlier in provincial edicts in South Kivu in 2016 and North Kivu in 2019. The combin…

Shivsai S Nakul, National Law University Odisha India’s colonial-era High Courts were not merely designed as houses of adjudication; they were carefully integrated into the grand architecture of empire, deliberately sited next to sprawling, landscaped maidans, parks, and public gardens. This British civic planning was meant to project an aura of serene, detached authority. Decades later, however,…

This is the second of two posts examining New Zealand’s Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Act 2026. Part I examined the legislation’s intervention in Smith v Fonterra and situated it within an emerging international backlash against corporate climate litigation. This post asks a different question: what does New Zealand’s decision to extinguish climate tort [&#8…

Dr. Babita Negi, Independent Researcher, Himachal Pradesh, India ABSTRACT Wildlife constitutes an essential component of the ecological system and plays a significant role in maintaining biodiversity, ecological balance and the well-being of present and future generations. India, with its diverse geographical regions and rich biological resources, possesses a wide variety of flora and fauna. Howe…

This is the second of three consecutive posts on corporate climate accountability. Yesterday’s post examined the Paris Judicial Court’s June 2026 ruling in Notre Affaire à Tous et al. v. TotalEnergies SE.  On August 18, 2026, New Zealand’s Parliament enacted the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Act 2026 (the Liability Act), passing 67 votes to […]

A push by President Trump could mean the elimination of a safety standard designed to keep radiation exposure as low as possible.

Deepanshi Shukla & Rishav Srivastva, B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam ABSTRACT A major advancement in the regulation of environmental marketing in India is the Central Consumer Protection Authority's Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Greenwashing or Misleading Environmental Claims, 2024. The Guidelines attempt to counter environmental claims ma…