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By:

Hridbina Chatterjee

29 August 2024 at 3:43:30 pm

Driving Climate Accountability

As political inertia stalls environmental action, courts and green tribunals across the Global South are turning legal principles into enforceable climate accountability. Protecting ecologically sensitive areas is increasingly testing the balance between economic development and environmental obligations. As governments struggle to translate environmental commitments into action, judicial institutions across the Global South are emerging as powerful enforcers of ecological accountability. The...

Driving Climate Accountability

As political inertia stalls environmental action, courts and green tribunals across the Global South are turning legal principles into enforceable climate accountability. Protecting ecologically sensitive areas is increasingly testing the balance between economic development and environmental obligations. As governments struggle to translate environmental commitments into action, judicial institutions across the Global South are emerging as powerful enforcers of ecological accountability. The recent two-day international summit on ‘The Future of Environment and Climate Dynamics’ inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hosted by the National Green Tribunal in New Delhi, brought together jurists from 17 nations to explore this expanding role of the judiciary in climate governance. The Delhi summit underscored that courts and specialized tribunals are no longer mere arbiters of dispute but have become active, institutional drivers of climate accountability, translating abstract ecological commitments into enforceable, day-to-day legal remedies. Judicial Environmentalism This phenomenon of judicial environmentalism is understood as a structural response to a longstanding deficiency in execution. Although developing nations are generally at the forefront of establishing ambitious statutory goals, from renewable energy development to forest preservation, the bureaucratic apparatus that is responsible for enforcing these goals has usually faltered in the face of political compromises and enforcement difficulties. Several specialized institutions, like the National Green Tribunal in India, were specifically established to fill this gap. By combining judicial expertise with technical assessment, tribunals have created a forum where regulatory inertia can be challenged directly by citizens, local communities, and non-governmental entities. The gathering of jurists from 17 developing and emerging nations indicates that this is not an isolated experiment, but a developing trend in the Global South, where the judiciary is taking the initiative for transforming legislative goals into tangible ecological protection. Fundamental principles like the public trust doctrine, intergenerational equity, and the polluter pays principle are at the base of this judicial transformation. In the past, these ideas were merely present in the introductory part of legislative texts or in international declarations. However, in recent times, courts began to convert abstract legal concepts into practical solutions. The use of the public trust doctrine helps courts remove full power from governments regarding the reclassification of sensitive areas like wetlands and forests for industrial purposes. The evolution of the principle of intergenerational equity means that courts gain the right to examine whether certain industrial activities will have negative consequences for future generations. Moreover, this operational jurisprudence has drastically changed the mechanisms of climate finance and corporate accountability from its original form. In various jurisdictions across the Global South, specialized environmental courts have ceased conducting the standard practice of issuing cease-and-desist orders. Instead, these courts have begun creating compensation schemes whereby polluters have to pay for damage done to the environment for a specified amount, and these funds are devoted to local ecosystem restoration projects. By linking monetary liability, which has to be paid by polluters, to ecological restoration, courts make sure that polluters bear financial responsibility that prevents them from causing damaging actions. This judicial practice has made sovereign states and state agencies accountable for their failure to enforce the law, creating an obligation to control different processes in an open manner and in a constant manner. A Regional Engine The collaborative dynamics highlighted during the summit point toward the creation of a cross-border judicial framework across the Global South. Problems arising from the deterioration of trans-border river basins, air pollution, and exposure to vulnerable coastal areas disregard borders. At the same time, negotiations related to functioning in these shared spaces are full of political and diplomatic problems. However, judicial systems, similar in terms of principles of law and constitution, provide an unconventionally effective way of aligning institutions. Hence, judges share their protocols, processes, and interpretations of laws and thereby lay the foundations of a distinctive jurisprudence aimed at the conditions of the Global South. This framework is particularly significant in balancing rapid economic development with environmental conservation. According to the proceedings, countries of the Global South face the challenge of addressing poverty and the disproportionately negative effects of climate change, which is largely attributed to historical industrialization in other places. By incorporating the principle of the right to a clean environment as part of their constitutional and human rights, judicial institutions aim to ensure that economic growth does not come at the cost of ecology and those suffering in society. The involvement of international judges in the proceedings demonstrates the growing recognition of judicial enforcement as an important tool of justice and accountability, which should be applied to both national governments and international obligations. Ultimately, the proceedings hosted by the National Green Tribunal demonstrate that judicial environmentalism has evolved from a reactive mechanism into a proactive, institutionalized engine of climate governance. As executive machinery continues to navigate competing electoral priorities and political constraints, the responsibility of maintaining the delicate balance between human development and planetary preservation increasingly rests upon the strength of the courtroom. By enforcing strict administrative accountability, defining clear technical parameters for regulatory compliance, and asserting the primacy of ecological constitutionalism, specialized tribunals across the Global South are establishing a transformative paradigm where judicial oversight bridges institutional gaps, ensures long-term regulatory integrity, and guarantees that the rule of law serves as the ultimate safeguard for present and future generations. (The writer is a columnist and policy researcher with a focus on South Asian geopolitics, India’s foreign policy, and the Indo-Pacific. Views personal.)

Iran’s Orbital Defiance

Writer: Ruddhi Phadke
Ruddhi Phadke
Jan 1
4 min read

The Islamic Republic’s latest satellite launch powered by Russia shows how sanctioned powers are reshaping the politics of orbit

For decades, space has been sold to the public as humanity’s most cooperative endeavour and as a realm above borders where science trumps politics. Yet, history suggests otherwise. From Sputnik’s shock in 1957 to the weaponised GPS of modern warfare, the orbit has always been an extension of earthly rivalry. Iran’s latest satellite launch executed with Russian help despite Western sanctions fits squarely into that tradition.


On December 28, Iran placed three satellites into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Siberia. The mission, unremarkable by global standards, was a crowded ‘rideshare’ flight carrying 52 satellites for multiple customers, including two Russian Earth-observation platforms and dozens of CubeSats. What made it noteworthy was the political context. Under heavy Western sanctions and diplomatic isolation, Iran had once again reached space with Moscow’s explicit assistance.


Tehran says the satellites - Paya, Zafar-2 and Kowsar - are civilian tools, designed to monitor agriculture, map natural resources and track environmental change. According to Iran’s state news agency, all three were developed domestically. Paya, weighing 150 kilograms, is reportedly the heaviest satellite Iran has yet deployed. Kowsar is far lighter at 35 kilograms, while details of Zafar-2 remain opaque.


Russian Aid

This was Iran’s second satellite launch of the year. In July, it also relied on Russian launch systems to reach orbit. Cut off from Western space markets, Iran has found in Russia a willing launch partner. The collaboration reflects perfect political alignment as well given that both countries are under sanctions, both frame their technological projects as symbols of sovereign resistance and both see space as a domain where Western dominance can be challenged without firing a shot.


Western governments remain sceptical of Iran’s benign explanations given the overlap between space-launch vehicles and ballistic-missile technology. A rocket capable of placing a satellite into orbit shares much of its DNA with one capable of delivering a warhead over long distances.


While Iran insists that its aerospace programme is peaceful and compliant with United Nations Security Council resolutions linked to its nuclear activities, the distinction between civilian and military use is technologically thin.


Such ambiguity is hardly unique to Iran. The United States, the Soviet Union, China and India all built their space programmes on foundations laid by military rocketry. Sputnik itself was less a scientific breakthrough than a demonstration of intercontinental missile capability. India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, today a commercial workhorse, grew out of strategic anxieties after China’s nuclear test in 1964. Iran, in this sense, is following a well-trodden path albeit under far heavier scrutiny.


Space Dreams

Iran’s space ambitions date back to 2009, when it first launched a domestically built satellite. Progress since then has been uneven, marked by technical failures as well as quiet successes. Yet, Tehran has invested in launch sites, satellite design and data-processing infrastructure, all under the banner of self-sufficiency. Space, for Iran’s leadership, is about national pride, technological independence and strategic presence in a region where information dominance increasingly shapes power.


Russia’s role adds another layer. Over the past decade, Moscow has sought to preserve its status as a leading space power even as budgets tighten and Western partnerships fray. Cooperation with Iran offers practical benefits: shared costs, additional launch demand and geopolitical leverage. For Tehran, Russian rockets provide access to reliable launch capacity otherwise denied by sanctions. For Moscow, Iran is both a customer and a fellow traveller in a world less hospitable to Western norms.


The timing of the December launch sharpened its political edge. It coincided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington - a moment when Iran’s regional posture was under intense discussion. Whether deliberate or convenient, the overlap sent a quiet signal which was that Iran’s technological trajectory will not pause for diplomatic choreography.


In West Asia, where advantage today accrues less from mass than from who sees first and longest, earth-observation satellites carry weight. While they may be billed as instruments of agriculture and climate, they also linger over borders. Even modest platforms, when paired with reliable launch partners and shared data, can shift strategic confidence. Cooperation with Russia therefore offers Iran more than orbital access: it extends its gaze, and with it, its room to manoeuvre.


More broadly, the episode underlines how space has become a geopolitical multiplier once again. What began in the 20th century as a duopoly of the Soviet and the American superpowers has evolved into a crowded arena of sanctioned states, emerging powers and commercial actors, all blurring the line between civilian utility and strategic intent. Then as now, access to orbit confers status as much as capability.


And sanctions, far from freezing technological ambition, tend to redirect it. They push states towards alternative partners, parallel systems and conspicuous demonstrations of resilience. For Tehran, space offers a means of asserting continuity and competence under pressure, a reminder that isolation need not imply stagnation. For Russia, it is another channel through which to dilute Western isolation, sustain relevance and bind fellow outliers into a looser, but durable, technological alignment.

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