India: Environment

For many Indian businesses, the climate journey begins with a simple exercise: measuring their carbon footprint. But as India’s carbon market takes shape, knowing your emissions is only the starting point. A more important question then emerges: What do these numbers mean for business and what should we do next?

India has pledged to reduce its GDP emissions intensity by 45% by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2070. The Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, 2023 establishes a baseline-and-credit system requiring energy-intensive industries to meet greenhouse gas emission intensity targets or purchase carbon credit certificates. This framework shifts India's regulatory focus from energy efficiency to carbon intensity, creating both mandatory compliance obligations and voluntary offset opportunities.

India's mining sector is undergoing rapid transformation through legislative reforms, technological integration, and evolving jurisdictional disputes between central and state governments.

India has pledged to reduce its GDP emissions intensity by 45% by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2070. The Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, 2023 establishes a baseline-and-credit system requiring energy-intensive industries to meet greenhouse gas emission intensity targets or purchase carbon credit certificates. This framework shifts India's regulatory focus from energy efficiency to carbon intensity, creating both mandatory compliance obligations and voluntary offset opportunities.

His Majesty's Treasury (HM Treasury) of the United Kingdom (UK) has formally recognised India's Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) as a qualifying carbon pricing mechanism under the United Kingdom's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

The Public Law Practice Group at Dentons Link Legal presents this edition of the Environment Law Newsletter, highlighting recent legal and regulatory developments shaping India’s environmental landscape. As concerns over environmental degradation continue to intensify, this issue examines key ecological and compliance challenges across industries with significant environmental footprints, alongside broader developments in pollution control, conservation, and sustainable resource governance

This Piece examines whether remediation, pollution-control, and restoration obligations of industrial corporate debtors survive, attach to assets, or extinguished during insolvency resolution under the IBC, and outlines a due-diligence framework for resolution applicants.

As Indian cities hurtle toward rapid urban expansion, often celebrated in terms of GDP growth, infrastructure, and high-rise skylines, a quieter crisis unfolds at the edge of this development: the disappearance of urban wetlands.

India generates an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 tonnes of plastic waste every day, of which a substantial share, approximately 10,556 tonnes daily, remains uncollected and enters landfills or the open environment. To address this, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (“MoEFCC”) has notified a national Extended Producer Responsibility (“EPR”) framework for plastic packaging under the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, as amended from time to time.

India’s climate commitments are substantial a net-zero target announced at COP26 and rapid growth in non-fossil energy capacity and clean-technology innovation across solar, wind, storage, electric mobility and waste management has grown alongside them. It is tempting to assume that a dedicated, incentive-rich “green patent” regime sits behind that innovation. The more accurate picture is of a patent system that accommodates green technology through general mechanisms, while stopping short of the bespoke incentives that some other jurisdictions have introduced.

As Indian cities hurtle toward rapid urban expansion, often celebrated in terms of GDP growth, infrastructure, and high-rise skylines, a quieter crisis unfolds at the edge of this development: the disappearance of urban wetlands.

The Public Law Practice Group at Dentons Link Legal presents this edition of the Environment Law Newsletter, highlighting recent legal and regulatory developments shaping India’s environmental landscape. As concerns over environmental degradation continue to intensify, this issue examines key ecological and compliance challenges across industries with significant environmental footprints, alongside broader developments in pollution control, conservation, and sustainable resource governance