Courts in India have been dealing with climate-related issues for a long time now, even though they might not have been categorized as climate litigation.
In an important ruling that could energize climate litigation in India, the Supreme Court last week said that people had a fundamental right to be free from adverse impacts of climate change and that this right flowed naturally from the right to life and the right to equality guaranteed in the Indian Constitution. The Supreme Court said that people’s right to clean air or a clean environment was already very well recognized in Indian jurisprudence and given the increasing ‘havoc’ being caused by climate change, it was necessary to carve out the right to be protected against its adverse effects as a distinct right in itself.
Interestingly, the detailed articulation of this new right by the apex court came in a case in which climate change was only incidental to the arguments. The main matter pertained to the conservation of the Great Indian Bustard, an endangered bird, in which the court had issued some directions that the central government had found too impractical to implement. Accordingly, three government departments petitioned the court to modify that earlier 2021 order, arguing, in part, that some of those directions affected India’s renewable energy prospects, which in turn could upset its climate change action plan and the international commitments it had made in this regard.
Leave a Reply