Corporate Accountability for Environmental and Wildlife Harm: An Emerging Legal Paradigm in India and International Law

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_20How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Corporate Accountability; Environmental Harm; Wildlife Protection; CSR Mandate; Polluter Pays Principle; International Binding Treaty

Abstract

A new legal paradigm of corporate responsibility with respect to economic and wildlife damage is emerging as both a fundamental change in Indian jurisprudence and under international law that considers voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) to be replaced by an obligatory and enforced duty of substantial reasons of constitutional responsibility, strict liability, and restorative justice. Corporations as legal entities have now a constitutional obligation under the Fifth Fourth Amendment Art 51A (g) to maintain the protection of ecosystems, biodiversity and wildlife, including the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard of this legal obligation, not simply as philanthropic activity. In this ecocentric mindset, it combines the polluter-pay principle whereby a firm has to finance the restoration of habitats, the recovery and preservation of endangered species in the event that the operations impact on them. Parallel developments in other countries also include the adoption of advisory opinions by the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights underlining the obligations of states to control corporate activities that result in climate and environmental harm.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Deepanshu Pachauri
AU  - Urmila Yadav
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/07
TI  - Corporate Accountability for Environmental and Wildlife Harm: An Emerging Legal Paradigm in India and International Law
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Conceptualizing Legal Framework and Policies for Domestic Animal and Wildlife Conservation: Issues and Challenges in Hybrid Mode (ICAR 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 243
EP  - 255
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_20
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_20
ID  - Pachauri2026
ER  -