UPSC EDITORIAL ANALYSIS : A half-hearted climate change verdict

Source: The Hindu, 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

• The Supreme Court has recognised right against the adverse effects of climate change as a distinct fundamental right in the Constitution.

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.

#### The flaws in the judgment:

#### ● The Court has tried to balance the need for land (and airspace) for solar and wind energy production in Rajasthan and Gujarat, with the imperative of protecting the bustard.

#### ● The government includes, in ‘non-fossil-fuel’ and ‘renewable’ energy, large hydropower and nuclear plants.

#### ○ Construction of mega-dams in the Himalaya has caused destabilisation, biodiversity loss, and displacement of communities.

#### ○ Nuclear power has led to forced displacement, curtailment of democratic rights as it is shrouded in secrecy, and the fear of centuries of contamination by untreatable nuclear wastes.

#### ● Mega-solar and wind projects have huge adverse impacts.

#### ○ The huge Pavagada Solar Park in Karnataka, has taken away grazing and agricultural land, and destroyed wildlife.

#### ○ In Changthang, Ladakh, a proposed 13 GW solar project will take up over 20,000 acres of fragile ecosystem

#### ■ Crucial for unique wildlife and nomadic pastoralism that produces the famous Pashmina wool.

#### ● The proposed over 1,400 acres next to the Chhari Dhand Conservation Reserve in Kachchh, Gujarat, could destroy an important bird area as also the livelihoods of Maldhari pastoralists.

#### ○ such renewable energy projects are excluded from environmental impact assessment (EIA) and clearance procedures, so their impacts are not even assessed.

#### ● Despite significant investment in renewable energy, the government is not reducing investments in coal.

#### ○ New coal mining blocks continue to be given a green signal

#### ■ including in some of the country’s most biologically diverse and socially sensitive (indigenous/ Adivasi) areas.

What should have been the court’s stand?

• The Court’s should ensure such a right: It ought to consider the potential of alternatives to these mega-projects. For example: rooftop and other decentralised renewable energy sources alone could yield over 600 GW. The Court observed: “Decentralized and distributed solar applications have brought substantial benefits to millions of people in Indian villages addressing their cooking, lighting, and other energy needs in an environmentally friendly manner The Court could have asked how much of produced energy is wasted in inefficient transmission and use for example, kitchen and other appliances and luxury consumption. The absence of demand management in India’s energy plans is shocking; While quoting climate-related judgments from other countries and some international agreements that India is party to Court has ignored the increasing jurisprudence and the United Nations’ declarations on rights of nature. It is a crucial part of just climate action, especially where led by indigenous peoples and other local communities to safeguard nature. The ecognition of the rights of the Ganga and Yamuna by the Uttarakhand High Court in 2017 (stayed by the SC on a plea by Uttarakhand government that the order was not implementable): It is a potential bulwark against climate-damaging actions such as big dams and other mega-projects. Compliance with global treaties on human rights: It would require critical appraisal of mega-renewable energy projects as much as of fossil-fuel sources. The Court could expand the positive potential of the judgment, by adding the aspects to the mandate of the expert committee it has set up: Whether there are alternative: less damaging ways (including decentralised renewable energy) of generating (or obtaining, through reduction of waste Luxury consumption of already available capacity) the power to be produced by mega-projects in Rajasthan and Gujarat Non-electricity means of meeting the same energy demand.

• For example: rooftop and other decentralised renewable energy sources alone could yield over 600 GW.

• The Court observed: “Decentralized and distributed solar applications have brought substantial benefits to millions of people in Indian villages addressing their cooking, lighting, and other energy needs in an environmentally friendly manner

• addressing their cooking, lighting, and other energy needs in an environmentally friendly manner

• The Court could have asked how much of produced energy is wasted in inefficient transmission and use for example, kitchen and other appliances and luxury consumption. The absence of demand management in India’s energy plans is shocking;

• for example, kitchen and other appliances and luxury consumption.

• The absence of demand management in India’s energy plans is shocking;

• While quoting climate-related judgments from other countries and some international agreements that India is party to Court has ignored the increasing jurisprudence and the United Nations’ declarations on rights of nature. It is a crucial part of just climate action, especially where led by indigenous peoples and other local communities to safeguard nature.

• Court has ignored the increasing jurisprudence and the United Nations’ declarations on rights of nature.

• It is a crucial part of just climate action, especially where led by indigenous peoples and other local communities to safeguard nature.

• The ecognition of the rights of the Ganga and Yamuna by the Uttarakhand High Court in 2017 (stayed by the SC on a plea by Uttarakhand government that the order was not implementable): It is a potential bulwark against climate-damaging actions such as big dams and other mega-projects. Compliance with global treaties on human rights: It would require critical appraisal of mega-renewable energy projects as much as of fossil-fuel sources.

• Compliance with global treaties on human rights: It would require critical appraisal of mega-renewable energy projects as much as of fossil-fuel sources.

• The Court could expand the positive potential of the judgment, by adding the aspects to the mandate of the expert committee it has set up: Whether there are alternative: less damaging ways (including decentralised renewable energy) of generating (or obtaining, through reduction of waste Luxury consumption of already available capacity) the power to be produced by mega-projects in Rajasthan and Gujarat Non-electricity means of meeting the same energy demand.

• Whether there are alternative: less damaging ways (including decentralised renewable energy) of generating (or obtaining, through reduction of waste

• Luxury consumption of already available capacity) the power to be produced by mega-projects in Rajasthan and Gujarat

• Non-electricity means of meeting the same energy demand.

Way Forward

• India’s model of development, heavily focused on mega-industrial, infrastructural and extractive projects It causes deforestation and displacement of communities, is fundamentally violative of constitutional rights. The government proposes an infrastructure project that will deforest 130 square kilometres of pristine rainforest and take up lands reserved for Scheduled Tribes in Great Nicobar It clearly violates this line of the Court’s judgment The destruction of lands and forests of tribal people or their displacement from their homes may result in a permanent loss of their unique culture.” The court should be directing the government to re-examine such projects.

• It causes deforestation and displacement of communities, is fundamentally violative of constitutional rights.

• The government proposes an infrastructure project that will deforest 130 square kilometres of pristine rainforest and take up lands reserved for Scheduled Tribes in Great Nicobar It clearly violates this line of the Court’s judgment The destruction of lands and forests of tribal people or their displacement from their homes may result in a permanent loss of their unique culture.” The court should be directing the government to re-examine such projects.

• It clearly violates this line of the Court’s judgment

• The destruction of lands and forests of tribal people or their displacement from their homes may result in a permanent loss of their unique culture.”

• The court should be directing the government to re-examine such projects.

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)

Editorial Analysis – 7 May 2024