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An Other History Of Knowledge And Decision In Precautionary Approaches To Sustainability, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay Jul 2014

An Other History Of Knowledge And Decision In Precautionary Approaches To Sustainability, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

In this paper, I offer an alternative reading of precaution with the hope of recovering the capacity of this ethic to facilitate legal and political decisions. Despite being a popular instrument of international environmental governance, decision-makers continue to understand this principle as reflecting an immemorial and natural instinct for preserving the environment in cases of scientific uncertainty. Such a reading, however, ignores the history and moral basis underlying this principle and thereby renders it obvious, and automatically adaptable to the politics of Sustainable Development. By offering a thicker history of precautionary governance at exemplary moments of ecological crisis I trace …


Because The Cart Situates The Horse: Unrecognized Movements Underlying The Indian Supreme Court’S Internalization Of International Environmental Law, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay May 2010

Because The Cart Situates The Horse: Unrecognized Movements Underlying The Indian Supreme Court’S Internalization Of International Environmental Law, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

The text that follows is intended to serve as an examination of the approaches and methods employed by the Indian Supreme Court in its effort to integrate international environmental norms such as the principle of Sustainable Development, the Precautionary Principle and the Polluter Pays Principle as part of the existing body of binding, municipal rules in India. Virtually all of Indian legal jurisprudence that speaks to this subject has been developed by the Supreme Court. Likewise, in no small part for this contribution, the Court has developed a reputation for being an activist institution that has since the mid 1980s …