Climate crisis will test existing laws; displaced people need status of their own: CJI Surya Kant

Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Friday said that people displaced by the slow degradation of their land deserve a status of their own, since existing refugee and migration laws were not designed for such displacement.

He warned that the climate crisis would test the boundaries of legal categories that have long been taken for granted.

“They deserve a status of their own, rather than being left in the space between two bodies of law that were never designed for them. This, too, is a reminder that the climate crisis will test the boundaries of legal categories we have long taken for granted,” the CJI said.

He added that judges and legal institutions must ensure that the law does not become uncertain precisely where people are most vulnerable.

The Chief Justice was speaking at the High-Level Commonwealth Policy Dialogue on Climate Justice at Marlborough House in London. The event was organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Legal Education Association (CLEA).

He said that climate vulnerability was not distributed equally and that the effects of climate change were often felt first and most severely by communities whose lives and livelihoods depended directly on the natural environment.

“When a smallholder or a fisher-family loses land, water, or a harvest to a crisis they did little to cause, the consequences extend far beyond environmental harm; they threaten the very foundations of livelihood, dignity and equality,” he said.

CJI Kant further said that the transition to clean energy must be fair. He pointed out that countries which were only now industrialising were being asked to move rapidly towards renewable energy, while the nations urging such a transition had spent two centuries building their economic strength on coal and oil. He, therefore, called for a fair distribution of the burdens arising from the transition, taking into account the differing circumstances of various regions.

Turning to the role of courts, the CJI said that judges were increasingly being asked to draw the line between developmental necessity and ecological survival without a clear legislative roadmap.

“The role of a Judge is therefore changing; it is no longer enough to know what the law says. We must also understand the world to which that law is being applied,” he said.

The CJI urged courts across the Commonwealth to learn from environmental principles and solutions developed in other jurisdictions instead of creating an entirely separate jurisprudential vocabulary in every country.

CJI Kant also stressed that environmental protection and development need not always be treated as competing interests, with one necessarily defeating the other.

He referred to a case in which officials in Delhi had felled protected trees without the Supreme Court’s permission to widen a road leading to a new hospital for paramilitary personnel injured in the line of duty. CJI Kant pointed out that instead of halting the road project, the Court ordered extensive compensatory afforestation and continued to monitor its implementation through periodic reports.

“A sapling planted and then forgotten is no remedy at all,” the CJI remarked.

He further stressed the need for subject-matter experts to assist courts throughout environmental proceedings, rather than being called only once as witnesses. He cited the Central Empowered Committee (CEC), a standing body of forestry, wildlife and environmental experts constituted by the Supreme Court nearly 3 decades ago.

He also referred to the National Green Tribunal, where judicial and technical members sit together.

“Environmental adjudication cannot remain the sole province of Judges and counsel. It needs scientists and policymakers in the room, rather than confined to the file."

He added that legal education must also evolve as climate disputes become increasingly scientific and technically complex.

"Environmental law could no longer remain a specialist subject taken up by only a small number of students," the CJI said.

He called on law schools to give greater attention to climate and environmental issues through clinical work, engagement with scientists and economists and participation in real-world environmental disputes.