Red signal for green dilution

SC underlines the need for better compliance

The Supreme Court has administered an important corrective, directing the government to follow the wider “dictionary definition” of forests as laid down in a two-Bench judgment of the apex court in 1996. The latest judgment was passed by a three-judge Bench on several petitions against the amendments to the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), passed by both Houses of Parliament in 2023. These amendments made the FCA applicable only to notified forest and land identified as “forest” in government records. The stated reason for the amendments was that the 1996 judgment applied the provisions of the FCA to recorded forests that had been put to non-forest uses. This had been a long-standing demand of infrastructure ministries, particularly of roads and highways. But petitioners against the amendments had suggested that millions of hectares of forests stood to be declassified as a result. More worryingly, the amendments had allowed zoos and safaris to be set up inside forests. As a result, Haryana, for instance, had planned an animal safari park in the pristine forest of the Aravallis. The Supreme Court’s order also stipulated that all such plans required court approval. While reverting to the 1996 definition for forests, the Supreme Court has also asked the government to prepare a consolidated record of all kinds of forests across the country. This means that states and Union Territories have to submit records of forests identified by expert committees set up under the 1996 judgment. The government has the deadline of April 15 to submit this data.

This judgment is one of several by the judiciary in restoring some semblance of balance against the steady weakening of environmental laws in recent years on the pretext of development. One decision, which is pending a Supreme Court appeal, is to grant retrospective approval to companies that had not complied with conditions to obtain environmental clearance under the Environmental Protection Act. Over 100 projects in such environmentally damaging industries as cement, coal, iron and steel, bauxite and limestone mining were granted exemption under this 2017 provision until the Supreme Court stayed it this year. Meanwhile, in 2022, the Union environment ministry had proposed to scrap the need for environmental approval for a raft of infrastructure projects — highways, airports, fishing ports, thermal power plants, and so on — located within 100 km of the Line of Control or an international border. Later, following dissent notes from some Opposition parties, a joint parliamentary committee clarified this would not entail “blanket permission” and was not open to the private sector. Given the ecologically sensitive nature of India’s border areas, whether in the mountains or on the coast, this clarification is unlikely to allay environmentalists’ fears. Land subsidence across several towns in Uttarakhand remains a cautionary tale of the dangers of over-construction.

The government has frequently wielded security or development needs as reasons for overriding green checks and balances. For instance, it said the rationale for the 2023 amendments to the FCA was that the law came in the way of building schools, toilets, and facilities for tribals. However, the amendment was redundant because the Forest Rights Act enabled the government to override the FCA and divert forest land for such projects. Given the rapid scale of degradation of India’s natural bounty, as the state of the forests reports highlight with depressing regularity the trend towards looser environmental controls in the name of development urgently needs to be revisited.