Bringing environmental law to life

There’s a saying in Hindi that roughly translates to, “knowledge increases when dispersed.” It’s a philosophy that guides environmental lawyer and PhD student Eeshan Chaturvedi in his ongoing effort to understand and engage with others at the intersections of climate law, policy, and finance.

Chaturvedi’s interest in environmental issues first began in Firozabad, his hometown in Uttar Pradesh, India. A major hub of India’s glass manufacturing industry, the city experienced heavy air pollution in the early 1990s. “I grew up where black clouds of smoke were normalized,” he said.

Having personally witnessed the impacts of unchecked pollution, Chaturvedi was immediately drawn to environmental law as a young JD student. This interest developed into a passion when he served as a law clerk both on the Supreme Court of India and at the National Green Tribunal, India’s dedicated judicial body for dealing with environmental disputes.

“I had a good view of how law transpired in courts,” he said. “What really intrigued me was how environmental laws come to life in context. I think of them as skeletons by themselves, and then it’s the context – political, social, and economic – that becomes their flesh and blood.”

Chaturvedi went on to engage with environmental law from a variety of perspectives. He earned a master’s degree from Stanford Law School, where he focused on environmental policy. Later, Chaturvedi worked with several international organizations including the World Commission on Environmental Law and the Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet.

He was also an assistant dean and associate professor at the O.P. Jindal Global University’s School of Environment and Sustainability in Haryana, India, where he taught environmental policy and climate governance. That experience marked a major turning point in his approach to the discipline.

“For the first time my learning was not limited to just law – I was venturing into policy, management, economics, and more. Through my teaching I realized that law is only a part of the puzzle,” he said.

This revelation inspired Chaturvedi to expand his academic pursuits. The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) presented the perfect opportunity to get involved in the kind of cross-sector scholarship he was looking for.

Now going into his third year in the PhD program, Chaturvedi is researching judicial decision-making in environmental law and the ways it can be informed by concepts from policy and finance.

“Despite the emphasis on interdisciplinary efforts in sustainability, the empirical methods of the physical and social sciences have yet to be widely incorporated into legal decision-making frameworks,” he said. “My current research aims to bring these facets together.”

Outside of the immediate goals of his research, Chaturvedi is focused on real-world impact.

“I’m very aware that my publications can get trapped in solely academic spaces,” he said. Instead, he’s intentional about “dispersing knowledge” more broadly, whether by teaching students, writing about environmental issues, or serving in leadership roles with international organizations.

“Implicit in my idea of being a good academic is to be involved in global efforts that are directed towards bettering sustainability laws,” he said. “It has been – and will remain – a constant goal of mine that my research is applicable at a global scale.”