The Hindu Business Line : Kerala High Court’s green initiative

Last week the State Forest Minister Benoy Viswom hailed the decision of the Kerala High Court to set up a Green Bench to hear forest-related cases, which, he added, would beef up the efforts of both the government and the conservation movement in the State to protect its forests and the rich resources and biodiversity of the State.

Coincidentally enough, this move comes on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the declaration of Silent Valley, arguably Kerala’s most famed forest repository of rare flora and fauna, as a National Park in 1983, which was subsequently designated as the core area of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in 1986.

Located in the southwestern corner of the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats, in Palakkad district of Kerala, Silent Valley is an “ecological island” that boasts minimally modified ‘climax’ forest cover that has produced a wealth of biological and genetic heritage, a rare biodiversity that has evolved over the 50 million years that is said to be the evolutionary age of the valley.

The Save Silent Valley movement of the 1970s campaigned to preserve the region’s bio-geographic isolation and the uniqueness of its flora and fauna, unsullied by human activities.

Shot in the arm

And now the proposal for the establishment of a Green Bench for the Kerala High Court will only add clout to the State’s environmentalism and conservation campaigns, whose genesis can be traced to the Save Silent Valley movement.

As the Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan explained in a speech: “The shortcomings of the executive in coping with the pressures on the environment brought about by change in the country’s economic policies had thrust the responsibility of environmental protection upon the judiciary.”

The origins of Green Benches in India can be traced to the landmark Supreme Court judgements of 1996 that attempted to create a dedicated judicial mechanism to deal with the increasingly large number of environmental cases that were being filed before the judiciary.

In what has since come to be known in judicial literature as the ‘Madras Tanneries Case’, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court asked the Madras High Court to set up a special Green Bench to look specifically into cases related to pollution by tanneries in the State, especially around Vellore.

Other High Courts, like those of Madhya Pradesh, Calcutta, Punjab and Haryana, soon followed suit with their own Green Benches.

In the wake of the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, the world’s worst industrial disaster in which methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant, killing thousands of people, judicial activism has strengthened in India.

This has, in turn, developed and fortified the country’s environmental laws and improved their enforcement.

Mounting litigation

With increasing urbanisation and industrialisation, environmental and ecological cases are bound to grow in number in Kerala. Green Benches – which are essentially environmental courts – offer a fast track for the resolution of such litigation.

This has happened elsewhere. In January 1988, the Supreme Court of the Philippines designated 117 courts for enhanced environmental adjudication. The Supreme Court of Indonesia is trying to develop an environmental certification programme for judges.

The road ahead

Yet the road ahead will not be smooth merely due to the creation of Green Benches.

As Chief Justice Balakrishnan pointed out: “Very often the courts have had to not only lay down the law but also closely monitor its implementation due to the political compulsions of the government. The executive needs to show stronger commitment towards implementation of environment-related laws.”

With the establishment of the Green Bench, the State can hope to encourage citizens to rely on the judiciary to resolve environment-related issues.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com

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