Earlier this year, the Uttarakhand High Court delivered two judgements granting legal rights to rivers and ecosystems considering them living entities, juristic, juridical and moral persons.
On March 20, justices A. Singh and R. Sharma – while hearing a P.I.L. filed in 2014 – declared the Ganga, the Yamuna and their tributaries as lawful entities based on the fact that these waters are sacred to a section of people. The Bench emphasised that the river is an entity dependent on glaciers, waterfalls and other natural aspects and it would be impossible to protect one facet sans safeguarding the entire environs.
Taking cognisance of the verdict, a group of conscientious citizens petitioned the Court that the Himalayas, glaciers, streams, other water bodies, etc. also be declared as licit entities at par with the Ganga and the Yamuna.
Consequently, the Bench delivered another ruling on March 30 based on parens patriae (parent of the nation) as a concept for the states within a federal structure defending their environment.
By invoking parens patriae jurisdiction, glaciers including Gangotri and Yamunotri; rivers, streams , rivulets , lakes , air, meadows, dales, forests, wetlands, grasslands, springs and waterfalls have the status of a legal person with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities. They are also accorded rights akin to Fundamental Rights / legal rights.
This means that any person causing harm, intentionally or unintentionally to the aforementioned units would be liable to be proceeded against under the law.
The latter adjudication is actually an enlargement of the former. It appears that the Court was fully aware of American jurisprudence on use of parens patriae – the guardianship of the State of the rights of entities unable to fight for their own entitlements. In a broader sense, the judges endorsed the basic concept that nature has rights like humans. For this, they quoted at length from the book ‘The Secret Abode of Fireflies – Loving and Losing Spaces of Nature in the City’ besides the writings of Prof. Vikram Soni and ‘green’ advocate Sanjay Parikh both of whom strongly believe that a Nature’s Rights Commission be constituted comprising concerned citizens and scientists above any political and monetary affiliation.
A country like Ecuador has provided inalienable rights to nature – perceived as a prodigious measure towards a paradigm shift.
The High Court acknowledged passage of the Te Urewera Act 2014 of New Zealand wherein the Te Urewera National Park was made a legal entity. In the context of their second pronouncement, the judges quoted two U.N. declarations i.e. the 1972 Stockholm Declaration and the 1992 Rio Declaration.
The million-dollar question is how to implement the rights of nature or the ecosystems? The Bench has taken care of this to an extent by declaring certain persons in charge. The Chief Secretary may co-opt seven public representatives from cities, towns and villages to speak for communities living on the banks of rivers, near lakes and glaciers. This proposition somewhat endorses the Nature’s Rights Commission concept of Prof. Soni and lawyer Parikh. The only apprehension here is that these agents would generally be influential people and not the real mouthpieces of populaces.
Another question is who shall be held responsible when rights are compromised? Will the indigent and marginalised jungle-dwellers be accountable?
The second decree mentions recession of glaciers including due to global warming. Will immense dams such as the Tehri Hydro Project be decommissioned? Will mammoth river-linking projects be scrapped? Several laws pertaining to ecological systems need to be revisited. For instance; the Forest Rights Act, 2006 prescribes that the environment has to be people-centric. If no balance is struck, confrontations are inevitable at least in Uttarakhand where the common man is of the view that no conservation is possible today without humans at the centre of such endeavours. The citizenry stanchly feels that the greed of vested interest groups has to be done away with.
A few issues for which the commoners have been fighting and even getting incarcerated for have to be taken notice of. These include a demand that no ecosensitive zones, sanctuaries, national parks and biosphere regions be created in Uttarakhand as it already boasts tree cover exceeding environmental parameters.