A study of the rights regime for environmental protection in India indicates that such protections overlap with constitutional rights guaranteed primarily to citizens or persons under the law. Contemporary jurisprudence has aggressively developed this intersectionality, declaring natural entities to be living persons with fundamental rights analogous to those of human beings. This article explores the role played by two judgments delivered by the Uttarakhand High Court – Mohammed Salim v. State of Uttarakhand and Lalit Miglani v. State of Uttarakhand – in the establishment of an effective framework for environmental protection. This is effectuated in both cases by assigning legal personality to rivers and articulating a conceptual shift from the human-centric approach. Accounting for the socio-cultural and spiritual relationships that have received legal protection, this article critically analyzes the judgments, their rationale and contributions to environmental protection. As the judgments articulate a paradigm shift in environmental protection, their effectiveness is best assessed through analyzing the frameworks created for their implementation. While the pronouncement of the Indian courts on the legal personality of rivers is an encouraging paradigm shift in environmental commitment, establishing the rights of nature was undertaken without due attention to the complexities that characterize the Indian socio-politico-religious context and to the legal consequences of bestowing vaguely contoured rights upon natural entities.

The blackout which left over 600 million people without power in India have correctly highlighted the pitfalls of depending on a carbon centric energy source. In fact, the entire South Asia has been experiencing the social, economic, and environmental effects of fossil fuel dependence including energy crisis, dramatic fluctuations in oil price, polluted atmosphere and finally the documented consequences of climate change. The climate concern has propelled renewable energy technologies into the mainstream to a greater extent than ever before, due to their ability to provide an alternative energy path. This paper contends that climate change is not merely an environmental issue but a social and human right issue of equity between generations. This paper critically looks at how far the concept of intergenerational equity has been made part of international climate law and policy. This paper discusses how dissemination of solar energy has the potential to advance intergenerational equity and mitigate the climate change affects in South Asia.

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The debate over control and ownership of natural and bio genetic resources has a chequered history in International environmental law. Historically genetic resources were considered and acknowledged as part of common heritage of mankind. But with the development of technologies and the heightened north south divide over the issue of sovereign right over natural resources the developing nations became extremely concerned with the exploitation of biological and Genetic resources. Access to benefit sharing (ABS) was considered as an answer to balance the interests of developed and developing nations and to conserve and protect bio diversity. Adopted on October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) of 1992, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (NP) has come into force after its 50th ratification on 2013. Nagoya protocol details on procedure for access and benefit sharing, disclosure mechanism, principles of transparency and democracy. The paper analyses the protection of access and benefit sharing envisaged under Nagoya protocol and its possible role in promoting sustainable development in the develoing nations.

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