Environmental Quality and Justice

This initiative seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of current institutional arrangements for enforcing environmental legislation and regulations in India and identifying ways in which implementation can be improved.

Who is monitoring the quality of our air and water to ensure that it’s safe to breathe and drink?  Are poor communities routinely targeted to host facilities with negative environmental impacts, such as dirty factories, landfills and more? Are our coastline and coastal ecosystems adequately protected?  Answers to these questions reveal that environmental monitoring, regulation and protection have not matched the pace of India’s development.  Effective enforcement of environmental law, whether through legal sanctions, citizen-driven petitions, or other means, creates “costs” of non-compliance. These costs, in turn, are levers that drive businesses and investors to respond to environmental law and incorporate sustainability into their decisions. This initiative seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of current institutional arrangements for enforcing environmental legislation and regulations in India and identifying ways in which implementation can be improved.

Keywords: CRZ, pollution map, coastal regulation, water pollution, air pollution, ambient water quality, ambient air quality, coastal ecosystem, environmental regulation, environmental justice, environmental quality

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