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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.)

Reef Politics

AP
Oct 3, 2025
3 min read

China’s ‘nature reserve’ at Scarborough Shoal is less about saving coral and more about cementing control.

In the South China Sea, conservation has become a new language of power. China’s latest gambit is to declare a ‘nature reserve’ around Scarborough Shoal, a speck of reef closer to Manila than to Beijing. To the Philippines, China’s move (it had seized the shoal in 2012) smacks of ecological greenwash masking geopolitical muscle.


Scarborough matters for reasons far beyond its lagoon. For the Philippines, it is both a breadbasket and a symbol. The shoal lies squarely within its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as defined by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Filipino fishermen have plied these waters for generations. China, however, asserts what it calls “historic rights” over almost the entire South China Sea, demarcated by its infamous “nine-dash line” (later stretched to ten). In 2012, following a tense naval standoff, China seized de facto control of the shoal, barring Filipino vessels and cementing its presence with coast guard patrols.


Four years later an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in Manila’s favour, declaring China’s claims legally baseless and reaffirming the Philippines’ rights over Scarborough. Beijing ignored the verdict. In the decade since, the shoal has become an emblem of the weakness of international law against a determined great power.


What makes Scarborough especially significant is its location. It sits astride vital sea lanes and is closer to Manila than to China’s Hainan Island. Military strategists have long noted its potential as a forward outpost: if ever equipped with radar or military infrastructure, it could help China monitor U.S. forces in the Pacific and encircle the Philippines. The ‘nature reserve’ is a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard.


The timing is equally telling. Relations between China and the Philippines are already frayed. Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Manila has tilted back towards the United States after a period of Beijing-friendly hedging under Rodrigo Duterte. American and Philippine forces have conducted expanded joint exercises. The Pentagon has secured access to more Philippine bases, explicitly with an eye on China. By tightening its grip on Scarborough, Beijing signals that it will not be cowed.


Yet this contest is not merely bilateral. The South China Sea is a global artery with a third of world trade passing through it. Japan, Australia and European navies all have stakes in keeping it open. For America, treaty-bound to defend the Philippines, Scarborough is a litmus test of credibility. For Southeast Asia, meanwhile, it is a harbinger. Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei - all with overlapping claims - will watch closely whether China’s ‘green’ strategy succeeds. If Scarborough becomes a conservation zone policed by Chinese patrols, similar tactics could be applied to the Spratlys or even the Natuna waters claimed by Indonesia.


Since ancient times, great powers have cloaked expansion in lofty ideals, ‘civilising missions,’ ‘manifest destiny,’ even ‘scientific stations.’ In China’s telling, environmental protection is the latest fig leaf. Scarborough’s marine life has indeed been battered, not least by destructive Chinese dredging and clam harvesting. If Beijing were genuinely committed to conservation, it might have welcomed cooperative management with Manila.


Filipino fishermen, still dependent on the shoal, may find themselves pushed out entirely. Coast-guard encounters, already fraught with rammings and water-cannon blasts, could escalate. In an era when climate change and overfishing demand multilateral solutions, one country’s unilateral ‘reserve’ risks deepening regional mistrust.


For the Philippines, the dilemma is acute. To acquiesce would be to surrender maritime rights affirmed by international law. To resist risks confrontation with a vastly stronger neighbour. Manila has begun leaning on allies, appealing to Washington and rallying ASEAN partners. Yet unity within Southeast Asia remains fragile as many states fear antagonising Beijing, their largest trading partner.


Scarborough Shoal is a microcosm of Asia’s emerging order. It pits international law against power politics, environmental claims against strategic realities, and small nations’ rights against the ambitions of a giant. The corals may be at risk, but so too is the credibility of the rules-based order.

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