EDITORIAL ANALYSIS : A moment for just transition litigation to take wing
Kartavya Desk Staff
Source: The Hindu
• Prelims: Current events of international importance, COP, IPCC, Article 21, Article 14, CJI, Pavagada Solar Park etc
• Mains GS Paper II: Bilateral, regional and global grouping and agreements involving India or affecting India’s interests, Important international institutions etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
• In K. Ranjitsinh and Others vs Union of India, the Supreme Court recognised a human right against the adverse impacts of climate change.
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE
Context
Supreme Court judgment on climate change:
#### Judgment about Climate change and human rights:
#### ● Linking Right against climate change to Articles 21 and 14, CJI said: The rights to life and equality could not be fully realized without a clean, stable environment.
#### ● The right to health (which is a part of the right to life under Article 21) is impacted due to factors such as
#### ○ air pollution
#### ○ shifts in vector-borne diseases
#### ○ rising temperatures
#### ○ droughts
#### ○ shortages in food supplies due to crop failure, storms, and flooding.
#### ● The inability of underserved communities to adapt to climate change or cope with its effects violates the right to life as well as the right to equality.
#### ● If climate change and environmental degradation lead to acute food and water shortages in a particular area, poorer communities will suffer more than richer ones.
#### ● The interconnection between climate change and various human rights, including the right to health, indigenous rights, gender equality, and the right to development
#### ● The judgment noted that the right to a healthy environment, safe from the ill-effects of climate change, was a “fundamental human right”.
#### ● “Violations of the right to a healthy environment can reverberate across numerous rights domains, including
#### ○ The right to life, personal integrity, health, water, and housing
#### ○ Procedural rights such as information, expression, association, and participation
#### ● Unequal energy access disproportionately affects women and girls due to their gender roles and responsibilities such as through time spent on domestic chores and unpaid care work.
#### Positive impact of the judgment:
#### ● It will facilitate equitable and inclusive climate action.
#### ● It will break new ground by introducing ‘Nature’ or the non-human environment as an entity in the concept of just transition.
#### ● It will bolster research on just transition litigation in India by foregrounding existing cases
Just transition:
• It refers to the process of moving towards a more sustainable, low-carbon economy while ensuring fairness and equity for workers, communities, and regions currently dependent on carbon-intensive industries.
• It aims to make mitigative climate action inclusive and fair.
• It seeks to ensure that the burdens and benefits of decarbonisation are distributed equitably.
• The concept emerged in the 1970s as a tool to protect workers whose jobs were being threatened by increasing environmental regulation.
• In 2015, it was included in the international treaty on climate change, the Paris Agreement.
• A salient report by the United States-based Sabin Center for Climate Change Law: In addition to workers, just transition encompasses other persons in vulnerable situations. This includes indigenous communities, women, children, and minorities. Due to their pre-existing vulnerability, they are at a higher risk of being adversely affected by decarbonisation.
• This includes indigenous communities, women, children, and minorities.
• Due to their pre-existing vulnerability, they are at a higher risk of being adversely affected by decarbonisation.
#### Advantages of a just transition framing:
#### ● A just transition framing will allow the Court to facilitate equitable and inclusive climate action.
#### ○ The Court’s decision to juxtapose decarbonisation and biodiversity protection.
#### ● It recognises that the two ‘do not exist in disjunctive silos’, and that one cannot be prioritized at the cost of the other.
#### ○ It proceeds to frame them as adversarial choices — pitching the conversation of the Great Indian Bustard against conservation of the ‘environment as a whole’ (through decarbonisation).
#### ● It presents biodiversity protection as a smaller public interest in comparison to the larger public interest of decarbonising the economy.
#### ● This type of framing echoes the judiciary’s existing approach in renewable energy cases.
#### ○ In such cases, a just transition framing will preclude such inequitable and exclusionary climate action.
#### ● It will allow courts to strengthen decarbonisation efforts, while accounting for and protecting interests of affected communities and entities.
#### ● It will facilitate responsive mitigation action, which ensures that the burdens of decarbonisation are not disproportionately distributed.
#### ● This will pave the way for taking a more holistic approach, while determining the feasibility of undergrounding power transmission lines.
#### ○ The Court can treat protection of the Great Indian Bustard as a guiding factor.
#### ○ This will set the tone for equitable and inclusive climate action.
#### ● A just transition framing will enable the responsible and informed operation of renewable energy projects, and not decommission them.
#### ○ Thus, instead of being anti-climate, this case will belong to the new category of climate litigation emerging globally, i.e., litigation which is pro-just climate action.
#### ● This case provides an opportunity for the Court to expand the concept of just transition by introducing the non-human environment as an affected entity.
#### ● This case presents an opportunity for the Court to develop jurisprudence on just transition and expand its scope.
#### ● By applying the concept to protect an endangered bird, the non-human environment can be introduced as a separate entity in just transition.
#### ○ The Court may draw on its own decadal eco-centric jurisprudence on the rights of nature
#### ○ In 2023, it suggested the recognition of the rights of sentient animals by the legislature.
#### ● It will foreground existing just transition litigation in the country.
.Way Forward
#### ■ Just transition remains an understudied and under-researched area, both in climate law and litigation.
#### ○ Climate law research is focusing on mapping just transition litigation in different regions of the world.
#### ■ Given the significant number of renewable energy cases in India, a mapping exercise of just transition litigation is overdue.
#### ○ If the concept is introduced in the present case, it could act as a catalyst for this much-needed research.
#### ○ For example, they do not appear in the list of just transition cases available at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s Global Climate Litigation Database.
#### ○ If the Court uses this concept, it could facilitate relevant research geared towards filling the gap in our collective knowledge about just transition litigation.
• With an increasing number of countries attempting to move towards net-zero, just transition litigation is bound to rise. Land Conflict Watch has reported 20 ongoing disputes with respect to renewable energy projects in India. Equitable sharing of burdens and benefits arising from decarbonisation is central to most of these disputes.
• Land Conflict Watch has reported 20 ongoing disputes with respect to renewable energy projects in India.
• Equitable sharing of burdens and benefits arising from decarbonisation is central to most of these disputes.
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE
Describe the major outcomes of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). What are the commitments made by the India conference? (UPSC 2021) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)