Climate Change and Global Warming — Environmental Laws

Entry	Year	Description	Impact
42nd Amendment Act	1976	Introduced Article 48A (Directive Principles of State Policy) and Article 51A(g) (Fundamental Duties) into the Constitution, explicitly mandating the State and citizens, respectively, to protect and improve the environment.	Provided a constitutional basis for environmental protection in India, enabling subsequent legislation and judicial interpretation to strengthen environmental governance. While not directly about climate change, it laid the foundational legal framework for addressing environmental issues, including those related to climate change.
Not a direct constitutional amendment, but significant legal development	1980s onwards	Judicial interpretation of Article 21 (Right to Life) by the Supreme Court to include the 'right to a wholesome environment.'	Elevated environmental protection to the status of a fundamental right, allowing citizens to seek legal recourse against environmental degradation. This has been crucial in various public interest litigations (PILs) concerning pollution, deforestation, and now increasingly, climate change impacts, as seen in recent judgments recognizing the 'right against the adverse effects of climate change'.

Also build Paper II skills

Climate data, pollution metrics, and treaty timelines are natural practice for CSAT data interpretation and careful reading. CSAT hub.

• Data interpretation
• Correlation vs causation
• Estimation techniques