LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Biological Diversity and Legal Order 2016 Question Paper with Solutions

Biodiversity

Biodiversity means the variety of life. Its legal meaning is fixed by Article 2 of the Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 and, in identical terms, by section 2(b) of the Biological Diversity Act 2002: the variability among living organisms from all sources and the ecological complexes of which they are part, including diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems. The definition therefore reaches three levels, the genes within a species, the species themselves and the ecosystems they compose, and it measures difference rather than abundance.

Why flora matters

Plants are the base of every food web and every ecosystem service. Forests hold soil and water, regulate climate and store carbon; grasslands and wetlands support grazing and fisheries; and wild plants supply food, fodder, fuel, fibre, timber and medicine to millions of forest-dependent people. The wild relatives of crops carry the genes future agriculture will need, and endemic species of the Western Ghats, the Himalaya and the north-east exist nowhere else.

The threats

Flora is lost chiefly through conversion of land: forests cleared for agriculture, mining, dams, roads and settlements. It is also lost through destructive harvest of timber, bark, roots and whole plants for trade, through fire and overgrazing, and through invasive alien plants such as lantana, which smother native vegetation and alter forests.

The Supreme Court held that "forest" must be understood according to its dictionary meaning, covering all statutorily recognised forests whether designated reserved, protected or otherwise, and that "forest land" includes any area recorded as forest in Government records irrespective of ownership. It directed that all ongoing non-forest activity in any forest without Central approval, including sawmills, veneer and plywood mills and mining, cease forthwith; banned the felling of trees in the tropical wet evergreen forests of Tirap and Changlang in Arunachal Pradesh and the movement of cut trees and timber out of the seven north-eastern States; and required every State to constitute an expert committee to identify forests. The case bears on the question because it extended legal protection to plant communities wherever they grow, rather than only where a notification happened to exist.

The definition remains contested. The amendment of 2023 confined the Act to land declared or notified as forest and land recorded as forest in Government records on or after 25 October 1980, and in Ashok Kumar Sharma v. Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1164 of 2023, a challenge to that amendment, the Supreme Court directed by an interim order of 19 February 2024 that the understanding of forest laid down in Godavarman continue to be followed.

Why fauna matters

Animals keep ecosystems working. Predators such as tigers regulate herbivores and so protect vegetation, pollinators such as bees, birds and bats make fruit and seed possible, vultures remove carcasses that would otherwise spread disease, and fish and invertebrates sustain rivers and seas. Animals also carry cultural and religious meaning for many communities and support livelihoods through fisheries and tourism.

The threats

Fauna faces direct killing for trade in skins, tusks, horns, bones and live animals, loss and fragmentation of habitat, conflict with people over crops and livestock, deaths on roads, railways and power lines, pollution and pesticides, and diseases passed from domestic animals.

The Supreme Court allowed the State's appeals and restored the prosecution, holding that since cognizance of offences under the Act may be taken on the complaint of the officers authorised by section 55, a police case did not bar the Magistrate. It observed that the wild life laws are the result of an increasing awareness of the need to restore the serious ecological imbalances caused by human depredations on nature, and that the preservation of flora and fauna, some species of which are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, is a great and urgent necessity for the survival of humanity. The case bears on the question because it states, in the Supreme Court's own words, why fauna must be protected, and shows the Court refusing to let a technicality defeat that protection.

Part four. Why flora and fauna must be protected together

Plants and animals depend on each other. Most flowering plants need animals to pollinate them or disperse their seeds, and animals need plants for food and shelter. A forest emptied of its animals, sometimes called an empty forest, slowly loses the trees that animals dispersed; a protected tiger without forest to hunt in cannot survive. That is why section 2(37) of the Act of 1972 defines wild life to include vegetation, why sanctuaries and National Parks protect habitat and not only species, and why Article 48A speaks of forests and wild life in one breath.

Flora and fauna compared

Conclusion. Biodiversity means the variability among living organisms and their ecological complexes, within species, between species and of ecosystems, as defined in Article 2 of the Convention and section 2(b) of the Act of 2002, and flora and fauna are its plant and animal forms, joined in law by the definition of wild life in section 2(37) of the Act of 1972 and by Articles 48A and 51A(g). Flora needs protection because plants sustain every ecosystem, livelihood and future crop and are lost mainly to land conversion; the law answers through forest law, given its full reach by the dictionary meaning of forest in Godavarman, still defended against the amendment of 2023, and through protected areas and Schedule III. Fauna needs protection because animals keep ecosystems functioning and are lost to hunting, trade and habitat loss; the law answers through the ban on hunting, trade controls and protected areas, which Murad Ali Khan enforced against procedural objection and Nisar Khan against the pretext of captive breeding. Because each depends on the other, their protection succeeds only when habitats are protected whole.