SACHIDANAND PANDEY Vs. STATE OF WEST BENGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We grant special leave and proceed to dispose of the appeal.

(2.) A hundred and thirty-two years ago, in 1854, 'the wise Indian Chief of Seattle' replied to the offer of 'the great White Chief in Washington' to buy their land. The reply is profound. It is beautiful. It is timeless. It contains the wisdom of the ages. It is the first ever and the most understanding statement on environment. It is worth quoting. To abridge it or to quote extracts from it is to destroy its beauty. You cannot scratch a painting and not diminish its beauty. We will quote the whole of it :

(3.) Today society's interaction with nature is so extensive that the environmental question has assumed proportions affecting all humanity. Industrialisation, urbanisation, explosion of population, over-exploitation of resources, depletion of traditional sources of energy and raw materials and the search for new sources of energy and raw materials, the disruption of natural ecological balances, the destruction of a multitude of animal and plant species for economic reasons and sometimes for no good reason at all are factors which have contributed to environmental deterioration. While the scientific and technological progress of man has invested him with immense power over nature, it has also resulted in the unthinking use of the power, encroaching endlessly on nature. If man is able to transform deserts into oases, he is also leaving behind deserts in the place of oases. In the last century, a great German materialist philosopher warned mankind : "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves over much on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first." Ecologists are of the opinion that the most important ecological and social problem is the wide-spread disappearance all over the world of certain species of living organisms. Biologists forecast the extinction of animal and plant species on a scale that is incomparably greater than their extinction over the course of millions of years. It is said that over half the species which became extinct over the last 2,000 years did so after 1900. The International Association for the Protection of Nature and Natural Resources calculates that now, on average, one species or sub-species is lost every year. It is said that approximately 1,000 bird and animal species are facing extinction at present. So it is that the environmental question has become urgent and it has to be properly understood and squarely met by man. Nature and history, it has been said, are two component parts of the environment in which we live, move and prove ourselves.