MADHAVAN KUTTY Vs. DISTRICT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT AUTHORITY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Environmental litigation in our country has been fairly enthusiastic in the last three decades, and with it has come a realisation that we simply cannot take nature for granted any more. It was the great Mahatma Gandhi who warned our people that while nature offers enough to satisfy human need, it does not offer enough to satisfy human greed. Relentless and unscientific exploitation of our natural resources has left us grappling with myriad environmental problems such as higher pollution levels in our cities, a significantly reduced quantity of water for our daily needs and a climate that is becoming increasingly hostile to human habitation. The situation calls for practical and meaningful measures to be adopted while regulating developmental activities that could impact the environment.

(2.) While legislative measures that exist in our country are largely the outcome of international treaty obligations, which our country was obliged to honour through domestic legislative expressions of its commitments to the cause of environment, it is the judiciary that has played a significant, and arguably dominant, role in shaping the regulatory mechanism that is now in place. By invoking the doctrine of public trust and using it to forge the principle of sustainable development, the precautionary principle, the polluter pays principle and the principle of inter-generational equity, environmental jurisprudence in our country has now evolved to a level where no developmental activity is seen as worth pursuing if it has the propensity to adversely impact the environment. And so it must be, if we are to progress from being just another nation that looks at its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of prosperity, to one that is keen to ensure a Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH) of its people.

(3.) The interpretation of a regulatory provision that is designed to safeguard the environment has necessarily to be a meaningful and purposive one that ensures that the object of the regulatory measure is given effect to in full measure. The present batch of writ petitions present such an instance, where this court is called upon to interpret the provisions of the Environment Impact Assessment Notification 1996, as amended by the Notification of 2016, to discern whether a resident of an area, where quarrying activities in respect of minor minerals (granite metal, in these cases) is contemplated, has a right to be heard in respect of the objections raised by him to the grant of an Environment Clearance Certificate to the project proponent.