Sustainable Development Law

The Law for the Future

Sustainable Development Law explores a completely new paradigm in world jurisprudence. It reflects a concern of the present generation for the future based on learning from past generations. In the development of international law, sustainable development has been addressed mostly in the form of soft law. Remarkably, however, the Supreme Court of India as well as High Court of Uttarakhand has adopted the hitherto soft principles of sustainable development into workable and authoritative legal norms at the national and state levels of jurisprudence. Here, author Kartikey Hari Gupta records the development of principles of sustainable development from ancient Indian jurisprudence through the modern-day contextualization of the idea. He also considers the fundamental flaws in the present-day sustainable development approach of the United Nations. Finally, Gupta presents a unique case study on the sustainability of hydropower projects in the newly created hill state of Uttarakhand, offering an in-depth analysis of the growth-versus-development debate. Examining the topic from a variety of perspectives, this study advocates the need for enactment of new laws regarding sustainable development.