Mansiz Sharma & Adarsh Verma, Jamia Millia Islamia
ABSTRACT
With the beginning of winter season cities of northern India almost became gas chamber and AQI (Air Quality Index) released by CPCB shows worst quality of air in Delhi NCR region and it is quite common during these days that MOEFCC releases guidelines for construction and other economic activities which causes air pollution and even Health Ministry publishes warning for elderly people regarding pulmonary and respiratory problems. This is just one manifestation of problem of environmental degradation in country and world, species loss, habitat loss, economic loss, cultural degradation could be other consequences.
In short environmental degradation is causing economic, social, cultural, physical and mental hardship to people and worst affected are tribal indigenous people who largely depends upon nature for their livelihood. Poor, children physically impaired and women are other vulnerable groups.
Our constitution ensures “Right to Life with Dignity” as fundamental right to every individual under Part III. And whenever there is economic, social, cultural, physical, mental and aesthetic damage to individual in particular and society at large in general than this right is breached and it became foremost duty of State and its organs to ensure this right to people. Legislature performs this duty by enacting environmental laws, executive by framing environmental friendly regulatory policies and judiciary by ensuring right to clean and healthy environment to each individual. So Indian Parliament has enacted several laws for this purpose and one famous & latest among them is “The National Green Tribunal Act of 2010” to provide speedy and effective justice to people relating to environmental issues.
Moreover, it should not be forgotten that environment is a shared resource of mankind and degradation of it in any part of world will affect whole Earth, so a collective international effort is required for its protection and conservation. India is frontrunner in this endeavor and always proactively participated in such international conventions and treaties and is signatory of many such protocols and agreements. One such landmark international agreement is Paris Agreement to check global rise of temperature to combat global warming, it asks parties to cut emission of GHGs and adopt clean technologies. India is signatory to Paris agreement and made an ambitious commitment under it to reduce GHGs emissions.
It has been observed in recent past that instead of having international and national laws for environmental protection the quality of air is worsening day by day and air pollution is at its highest level so far. The degradation of environment is impacting the workload of judiciary as well, as cases related to environmental degradation injury are increasing and despite of constitution of NGT Supreme Court is overloaded with such cases.
This article will analyze the NGT Act in detail and tries to find out lacunae in legislation and then proceeds to suggest desired changes so that it became effective. Moreover, article will analyze international environment laws in detail, their evolution and present status after Paris Agreement. Then this article will tries to compare Indian NGT Act with international Paris agreement and find out whether poor functioning of NGT can be cured by aligning it with international environmental laws and this can be done by giving more powers to NGT. This article will be helpful for achieving environmental neutrality through legislative reforms and will be useful to ensure “Right to Clean and Healthy Environment” to people so that their overall standard of living will improve.
