One For Another: The Unsettling ‘Green-On- Green’ Paradox
Bhavya Sankar, Symbiosis Law School, Pune
Introduction
In the desperate rush to address climate change, governments across countries alike are taking actions such as reducing their fossil fuel emissions and instead expanding their renewable energy sources. This modus operandi works wonders for the mitigation of the climate crisis, but poses startlingly harsh human rights issues. The climate crisis has become staggeringly recognized, causing the global calls for increased mitigation action to become heavy on the minds of individual countries. The energy transition agendas that consequently follow have truly devastating side-effects like social exclusion, restricted access to land and other resources and the increased marginalization of communities (particularly tribal ones). The projects regarding renewable energy and biodiversity present a slightly unsettling overlap. The Green- on-green paradox is rampant where the development of climate-positive infrastructure results in the degradation of localized biodiversity and the systematic dispossession of the very communities who have, for ages, served as the earth’s most loving conservationists.
This paper aims to deconstruct the ‘Green-on-green’ paradox by analysing how global climate policies are operationalized through tools like dispossession. The methodology is primarily doctrinal and secondarily, critical legal analysis oriented. There will be use of a multi-scalar approach, road mapping numerous treaties alongside directives and legislation. The doctrinal foundation will be supplemented by a Socio-legal case study focusing on the energy battle in the Thar Desert. The paper, furthermore, takes on a political ecology lens when necessary, thus allowing for a comprehensive analysis of the topic at hand.
