EL 401 | Environmental Law

This is a core subject which is mandatorily to be taught for the under graduate programme and develops on the Natural Resource Management Course (Land Laws) that has been taught in the second year.

Since one needs to tackle environmental law, keeping in mind the changes that are happening in quite a lot of other related fields of law, the course aims to ensure that a trans-disciplinary approach is followed. This would enable the student gain much needed insight as regards environmental law decision making and related aspects.

This course would focus more on the domestic aspects on environmental law and policy as the basic aspects of natural resource management have already been covered in the second year. However a critical overview and detailed analysis of biodiversity law, against the backdrop of the evolution of International Environmental Law, would constitute part of the curriculum.

Primary materials would be relied on, amply supported by secondary material and case laws.

There will be lectures on each module to put across a basic idea of the topic followed by class discussions and debates. This apart, students would be identified to take the lead as regards discussion on various topics. It is also proposed to have a few guest lectures by eminent persons having a hand on experience in this field of law.

Since quite a good number of areas of this discipline are of contemporary relevance and debate, evoking a wide variety of opinions and points of view, to familiarize the students to such debates and to hone their skills of environmental advocacy, a negotiation exercise introduced on a number of issues, as a tool of learning, since the last few years, is also part of the methodology of learning and evaluation.