Climate Change Litigation, and the Newest Control of All

In one line

On 21 March 2024 the Supreme Court held that the people of India have a right against the adverse effects of climate change, and that holding is the newest thing on this syllabus.

The decision

Facts. In M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 280, a petition to protect the Great Indian Bustard and the Lesser Florican, both close to extinction, had led in April 2021 to an order requiring overhead power lines in their habitat in Rajasthan and Gujarat to be laid underground. The Union sought modification, pointing to the effect of that order on India's solar and wind capacity and so on its climate commitments.

Held. The Court modified the earlier order and constituted an expert committee to identify where undergrounding was feasible. In doing so it held that the people of India have a right against the adverse effects of climate change. Articles 48A and 51A(g), although not justiciable in themselves, show that the Constitution recognises the importance of the natural world, and that importance becomes a right in Articles 21 and 14, which are the sources both of the right to a clean environment and of the right against the adverse effects of climate change. Without a clean environment which is stable and unimpacted by the vagaries of climate change the right to life is not fully realised, and the inability of underserved communities to adapt violates the right to equality as well.

Why it matters. It is the newest development on this syllabus and the one that separates a current answer from a stale one, and it is a rare case in which two environmental goods are in conflict with each other rather than with development: species protection on one side and decarbonisation on the other.

What the right is, and what it is not

It is derived, not enumerated. The Constitution contains no environmental fundamental right. Article 48A directs the State to protect and improve the environment and safeguard forests and wild life; Article 51A(g) makes it a fundamental duty of every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment. Neither is enforceable in itself. The Court's route is the same one it took for the right to a clean environment: the directive principle and the fundamental duty show what the Constitution values, and Articles 21 and 14 make it a right.

It rests on two articles and not one. Article 21, because a life without a stable climate is not the full enjoyment of life. And Article 14, because the burden of a changing climate falls unequally and those least able to adapt suffer most. The equality limb is what makes it a climate justice holding and not merely an environmental one.