Focus - Water Law

Welcome to IELRC.ORG

The International Environmental Law Research Centre is an independent research organisation focusing on international and comparative environmental law issues, with a particular emphasis on India and East Africa.

The aim of the IELRC is to contribute to the establishment of legal and institutional frameworks which foster sustainable environmental management in developing countries in an equitable international context...    [ read more ]

Latest news on IELRC.ORG

Report co-authored by Usha Ramanathan for the Ministry of Environment and Forests on forest land diversion in Orissa related to proposed mining by Vedanta. [read more]

Paper by Usha Ramanathan 'A State of Surveillance'. [read more]

Publication in The Hindu of Usha Ramanathan's 'Implications of Registering, Tracking, Profiling', 5 April 2010. [read more]

Publication of: P. Cullet, A. Gowlland-Gualtieri, R. Madhav & U. Ramanathan eds, Water Governance in Motion: Towards Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Water Laws (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2010). [read more]

The Kyoto Protocol and vulnerability: human rights and equity dimensions

This chapter first examines the broad context within which human rights can be examined in the climate change regime. It then focuses on equity, one of the core concepts of the existing regime that provides direct and indirect links with human rights. It examines two dimensions of equity, first, in the context of emission reduction commitments and, secondly, in the context of the Kyoto mechanisms. The chapter then considers ways in which vulnerability could be given a much more central role in the future and examines a series of issues that concern the vulnerability of both states and individuals.

Forest Carbon Offsets and International Law: A Deep Equity Legal Analysis

Northern citizens, governments, and businesses are investing billions of dollars in the vast, imperiled forests of the South. In a forest carbon project, a developer plants trees to reforest a degraded ecosystem or preserves a forest that would have otherwise been degraded or felled. The developer can then sell the carbon, now sequestered in the trees and underground biomass, for a contracted period of time.

A Unique Identity Bill

India’s unique identification number project has been sold on the promise that it will make every citizen, the poor in particular, visible to the State. But the UID project raises crucial issues relating to profiling, tracking and surveillance, and it may well facilitate a dramatic change in the relationship between the State and the people.

A word on eminent domain

Eminent domain is understood as the power that the state may exercise over all land within its territory. Eminent domain requires that the power may be invoked only for a public purpose, but what constitutes public purpose is wide open to interpretation and use. The development debate which has been stoked by the mass displacement that accompanies large projects has placed a severe strain on the acceptability of the power of eminent domain.