Individual Rights to Environmental Protection in India

Probably more than any other jurisdiction on Earth, the Republic of India has fostered an extensive and innovative jurisprudence on environmental rights. Fifteen years after the onset of public interest litigation, it is now common for lawyers representing environmental claims to tum in the first instance to the terminology of rights rather than the more traditional rules of tort and crime. Not only has the Supreme Court ruled that every individual has a fundamental right to the ‘enjoyment of pollution free water and air’, but it has been willing to resolve complex matters of environmental management according to this test, and has fashioned a series of innovative procedural remedies to accompany the new substantive right. Moreover, in a country where the most serious costs of environmental damage fall upon impoverished and illiterate groups with limited access to the courts, the new environmental right is championed as a legal gateway to speedy and inexpensive legal remedy.

Environmental law · Jurisdiction · Jurisprudence · Liability · Political science · Supreme court · Tort · Environmental law and policy · Human Rights and Development · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact · Law