Climate Change Governance and Environmental Justice: Strengthening Legal Frameworks for a Sustainable Future

Abstract

Climate change is no longer only an environmental problem awaiting technical solutions; it is a problem of law, power and distribution. Those who have contributed least to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions (small island States, the rural poor, informal workers, women, Adivasi and forest-dwelling communities, and future generations) bear a disproportionate share of its harms, while having the least voice in the institutions that decide how the burden of mitigation and adaptation is allocated. This article examines how climate change governance can be restructured around the principles of environmental justice. It first develops a conceptual framework drawing on the distributive, recognitional, procedural and corrective dimensions of justice. It then evaluates the international legal architecture, from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to the Paris Agreement, and the recent judicialisation of climate obligations through the advisory opinions of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (2024), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (2025) and the International Court of Justice (2025). Against this background, the article analyses India's climate governance, including its 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution, the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme and the Supreme Court's recognition in M.K. Ranjitsinh v Union of India of a constitutional right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change. It argues that India's framework, though increasingly dense, remains fragmented, mitigation-centric and weak in its attention to justice. The article concludes by proposing a rights-based climate framework statute, justice-sensitive impact assessment, a statutory adaptation and loss-and-damage regime, strengthened procedural rights.