The enforcement of environmental law is today suffering in most of the world of poor
implementation and often the executive powers tend to abdicate their responsibilities to the
judiciary. In this perspective, the current trend has been to build up specialized courts and
tribunals to deal with environmental cases and to make easier the access to justice for
citizens, NGOs and disadvantaged groups. The high technical level characterizing
environment matters has led many judicial bodies to equip themselves with the necessary
expertise, including impartial “expert members” from research institutes and universities.
The solution adopted reduces the discretion in favour of the application of scientific
standards, creating multidisciplinary courts. For this reason, nowadays we can count over
1.200 Environmental Courts and Tribunals (ECTS), especially in developing or recently
developed countries, which share the characteristic of a hybrid legal/scientific board. One of
the most interesting reform in this field was approved in June 2010 in India with the launch
of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), exclusively dedicated to environmental matters. This
article will illustrate the legal and political issues leading to the establishment of the Indian
National Green Tribunal. It will describe its composition, considering that the NGT Act
requires the same number (from 10 to 20) of judges and experts and the possibility for the
Chairperson to summon (if considered necessary) any person having specialised knowledge
and experience in a particular case to assist the Tribunal. Starting from the most relevant
judicial cases, the final part of the essay analyses the 2010/2017 NGT activity, illustrating
the recent trend towards a strong preference for specialized and technical boards in
environmental adjudication.
