Environmental Policy Measures

In India, the principal legal framework for environmental protection includes the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 — an umbrella law enacted in the aftermath of the Bhopal gas tragedy, giving the central government wide powers to take measures for protecting and improving environmental quality, and to regulate industrial and other activities that pollute the environment. India has also established the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a specialised judicial body for the speedy and effective disposal of cases relating to environmental protection, conservation of forests, and other natural resources, including enforcement of legal rights relating to the environment.

Internationally, countries have coordinated action on climate change through successive agreements under the United Nations framework — the Kyoto Protocol, which committed industrialised countries to binding emission-reduction targets, and the later Paris Agreement, under which countries set their own nationally determined targets to limit global warming. These are mentioned here as well-established facts of international environmental policy, not as a detailed treaty-by-treaty study. …