From Guardianship To Partnership: Reimagining Environmental And Climate Rights In India Through Decolonial And Rights Of Nature Framework

India’s Climate change jurisprudence stands at a critical juncture, with consistent reports of the threat to the climate becoming irreversible. The paper analyses legal jurisprudence in light of the eco-centric framework, combining the right of nature theory with decolonial theory, and considers constitutional guarantees. The paper uses recent examples of environmental issues to shed light on their relevance and outlines two theories in environmental law jurisprudence to critically examine the various doctrines employed by the Indian Courts, such as the parens patriae and public trust doctrines, and to highlight the colonial legacies and the challenges they pose. Through a doctrinal legal analysis with a theoretical framework, analysing the landmark ruling in MK Ranjitsinh v Union of India through the lens of theoretical underpinnings of the theory, the paper realises the court’s emphasis on Climate Change in the Constitutional set-up, and then focuses on the orders so far passed in the Ridhima Pandey Petition, to argue that the judiciary has a centralizing, paternalistic tendency, which should be discarded in favour of a more decentralized indigenous focused approach to combat climate change in order to achieve a more equitable, participatory ecological governance model.