Ketan Jha

I am primarily interested in environmental and administrative/constitutional law.

My work previously focussed on climate ligation, and while volunteering for Plan B Earth I was lucky enough to contribute to some of the arguments in Plan B Earth v Secretary of State for Transport [2020] EWCA Civ 214 (subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court), and the earlier case of Plan B v BEIS [2018] EWHC 1892 (Admin).

Presently my focus is on two areas principally: the governance of (terrestrial) biodiversity net gain and the nascent parallel regime for coastal restoration.  I am particularly interested in citizen participation in both regimes in the context of, for example, citizen science and the contribution of local communities to (a) environmental data and (b) the enforcement of environmental law in the absence of private rights to sue.

Some key questions on (a) include:

Where planning authorities (e.g. local councils) are now required to negotiate obligations (of a 30-year duration) with developers to restore or create specific ecosystems, what is the proper role of the concerned environmental steward? 

Should restoration primarily or exclusively occur in the same geography as development, and is the current numerical system for discounting distant restoration suitable? 

Does requiring bespoke scientific assessment for irreplacable habitats create a perverse incentive for speculative science to be cast as robust with the imprimatur of environmental law?


The questions in (b) are similar, though with colleagues in the School of Applied Sciences, led by Corina Ciocan, I am also researching domestic and international governance of abandoned vessels, namely because their hulls are full of fibreglass, which substantially harms marine life.  The Plastics Treaty, the Basel Convention, and the Hong Kong Convention on ship recycling (coming into force this year) are all relevant, and at times irreconcilable sources of law in this area.  Our work explores both the 'rulebook' needed to deal with fibreglass as well as the key (extralegal) resourcing problems that create acute harms in coastal ecosystems.

I also have a keen interest in legal history. In 2018, I was a Hugo Grotius Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School, where I examined the Roman law provenance of the public trust doctrine - roughly the idea that residual state ownership of natural resources, especially the sea and seashore, comes with an attendant duty to preserve those resources or access to them.

I believe that research-led teaching is key in law. To that extent, nascent research projects animate my teaching of Public and Environmental Law, and in the brightest moments, the process of teaching refines and even generates cogent research ideas.

I am presently working on a number of short pieces with both UG and PG students.

I previously served as trustee for the UK Youth Climate Coalition, an organisation with historic significance for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, principally in relation to the concept of intergenerational equity.

I currently serve as a trustee for People and Planet, perhaps best known in the sector for producing the sustainability ranking criteria adopted by the Times. P&P also facilitate grassroots environmental organising.