Must give due importance to natural wealth: Supreme Court

Must give due importance to natural wealth: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court also criticised how a well-reasoned order of an Andhra Pradesh HC judge, who opted for AP HC after the state’s bifurcation, was impermissibly reversed by a judge of Telangana HC while entertaining a petition seeking review of the earlier judgment that had denied Qasim any right over forest land.

Quoting a 1854 letter of a tribal chief to the then US President saying that “earth does not belong to man; man belongs to earth”, the bench said, “Article 48A imposes a clear mandate upon the state as a directive principle of state policy, while Article 51A(g) correspondingly casts a duty upon a citizen to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for fellow living creatures.” This is a second verdict in two months where SC has sought to elevate environment protection to the same pedestal as fundamental rights.

Last month, in a case dealing with protection of Great Indian Bustard, the court had underscored the importance of protection of environment although it also said this had to be balanced with the need to ensure faster development. A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra had said, “Climate change may impact the constitutional guarantee of right to equality. Without a clean environment which is stable and unimpacted by vagaries of climate change, right to life is not fully realised. Right to health is impacted due to factors such as air pollution, shifts in vector-borne diseases, rising temperatures, droughts, shortages in food supplies due to crop failure, storms and flooding.”

In the Telangana matter, writing the 60-page judgment, Justice Sundresh said, “These two provisions qua a forest ought to be understood in light of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. We say so, as they represent the collective conscience of the Constitution. If the continued existence and protection of forests is in interest of humanity, various species, and nature, then there can be no other interpretation than to read the constitutional ethos into these provisions.

SC said the anthropocentric approach must give way to ecocentric approach. “Wealth of a country must be seen not only from the perspective of mere revenue, augmented through its industries and business activities. Rather, it must be seen by giving due importance to its natural wealth which contributes much more than the other factors,” it said.

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