The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) would start a course on environmental law from July 2010. Its a post-graduate diploma course in Environmental law run by IGNOU in association with World Wide Fund. “Real development will happen only if the environment is sustained. I hope that the new programme will present the right perspective of development to the students.” said V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, the IGNOU vice chancellor. IGNOU will also be launching programmes in conservation of species and biodiversity and offering these programmes to universities in near future.
According to Ravi Singh, secretary general and CEO of WWF-India, the course in environmental law will spread awareness about enviro-legal matters to the wider public. The programme would fill in the gap in knowledge about the repurcussions of climate change and dwindling number of species.The CEL is already offering an online diploma in environment law and has so far trained 500 students.The collaboration with IGNOU is expected to increase the reach of the programme to a wider section of society, according to Pillai
