Bridge & Boundaries: India’s Environmental Framework and the SDG-17 Enforcement Gap

Environmental protection in India stands at a critical crossroads. Over the past few decades, the country has developed an extensive legal and institutional framework aimed at safeguarding its forests, water bodies, biodiversity, and climate systems. At the same time, India has emerged as a committed participant in global sustainability efforts, aligning itself with international agreements and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, despite these formal commitments and policy ambitions, environmental degradation continues to intensify across regions. This book is written at this moment of tension-between intent and impact, commitment and compliance.

Bridge & Boundaries: India's Environmental Framework and the SDG-17 Enforcement Gap seek to explore this paradox. Rather than questioning the absence of environmental laws or partnerships, the book examines why strong frameworks often fail to deliver consistent results on the ground. It argues that the central challenge is not policy scarcity but enforcement weakness-shaped by institutional fragmentation, capacity constraints, uneven accountability, and the complex political economy of development.

The book places SDG-17, Partnerships for the Goals, at the centre of this analysis. SDG-17 is frequently celebrated as the connective tissue of the 2030 Agenda, emphasizing collaboration across governments, private sector actors, civil society, and international institutions. However, partnerships alone do not guarantee outcomes. This work critically examines how SDG-17 functions in the Indian environmental context-both as a bridge that enables cooperation and as a boundary that reveals the limits of voluntary, non-binding mechanisms when enforcement systems are weak.

This book adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from environmental law, public policy, governance studies, climate science, and development economics. It combines legal analysis with policy evaluation, institutional critique, and real-world case studies to present a holistic understanding of India's environmental governance landscape. Special attention is given to climate change, environmental justice, technological innovation, and the role of communities-areas where enforcement gaps have profound social and ecological consequences.