Open Access Research Article
Legal Personality To The Environment: An Analysis By: Chiranthana N Yadav & Nikhitha Naveen Kumar
Published Paper
Article Details
LEGAL PERSONALITY TO THE ENVIRONMENT:
AN ANALYSIS
Authored By: Chiranthana N Yadav,
3rd-year BALLB - School of law Christ (Deemed
to be) University
Co-Author: Nikhitha Naveen Kumar,
3rd-year BALLB - School of law Christ (Deemed
to be) University
Abstract
The employment of legal personality to the environment in law by providing
legal rights is rising, representing a significant advancement in ecological
domains. Personhood has been bestowed to many entities throughout history,
including animals, businesses, gods, etc. Experts have noted that these cases
of attributing personality are typically arbitrary. One of the most recent
additions to the list of entities which have received legal personality is the
components of the environment, such as rivers. Various theories and
developments from across the globe are beginning to recognize the environment
or some element of the environment as having legal personality. Legal
acknowledgement of the environment as having legal personhood can be found in a
diverse range of philosophies and advancements across the globe. Different
rights to the environment/ nature have been enshrined into the constitutions of
several countries. Non-human species and other creatures are now being
proclaimed legal people in increasing court cases as well as other endeavours
however, rivers have largely already been recognized as a person in New Zealand
and India, i.e. the river Ganga. The implications, advantages, and limitations
of this approach to environmental conservation are examined, but more research
is required. The author deals with the problem of examining whether the
environment should be given personhood through a jurisprudential and legal
lens, and it also answers the question of the practicality of granting legal
personality to the environment, i.e. the implementation of this concept into
reality. The paper aims to put forth the need to protect the environment and a
need for a strong duty-based approach to environmental laws. Along with this,
the paper aims to analyse the rights-based approach and investigates the new
legal rights given to the environment through various landmark judgements.
Introduction
Environment and its components
have been believed to be deities; it has been the core of human life since the
dawn of humankind. The divide between humans and their environment began with
the agricultural revolution, with the domestication of animals, rivers, and crops.
The privatization, and commercialization of nature, a result of increased trade
and demand for natural items such as spices and silk, exacerbated the divide.
Science advanced, raising people to the status of onlookers, by which they
learned to investigate, interpret, and the satisfactory way their surroundings.
The components of the environment became nothing more than consumable and
useless things from our heavenly perch, subject to the absolute authority of
their' master.'
A legal person/ juristic person is
not a natural being, a personality that the law of the land attributes to. It’s
an entity that is capable of holding duties and rights in society. A legal
person is anyone who can sue and be sued. Going back to history, not all humans
were given legal personality; e.g. the Greeks didn't attribute legal
personality to the enslaved people, but now in the 21st century, associations,
companies and robots are given legal personality.
"any subject matter other than a human being to which the law attributes
personality. This extension for good and sufficient reasons of the concept of a
personality beyond the class of human beings is one of the most noteworthy
feats of the legal imagination." –Salmond
Christopher D. Stone's work on
"Should Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural
Objects" conceives the idea of giving the environment a legal personality.
He established a viewpoint to form a legal relationship to establish
legislative protection for environmental rights. "In referral to this, in 1972, in the
case of Sierra Club v. Morton, the idea of the environment as a legal entity
came into being for the first time whereas, Justice William O. Douglas has
given a remarkable judgement".[1] He
suggested that environmental components have a locus-standi regarding their
safety and prevention. All persons who seem to have a meaningful interaction
with any particular ecological body must have a locus-standi to conserve the
environment.
International
and Indian perspectives.
A number of international cases have
addressed the relationship of legal personality to the environment. These are a
few instances: The Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act, which
gave the Whanganui River legal personality, was passed in New Zealand in 2017.
The Act acknowledges the river as an indivisible, living being with rights and
interests that must be safeguarded and protected by law.
The Atrato River in Colombia, which
is revered by the Embera indigenous people, was the subject of a lawsuit
brought out in 2016 by the Colombian NGO Comité Por la Defensa del Agua y del
Páramo de Santurbán. The Colombian Constitutional Court ruled in 2017 that the
river is entitled to protection from pollution and has legal rights.
The Great Barrier Reef, Australia, a
group of young activists filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights
Commission in 2019 stating that the Australian government's inaction on climate
change violated both their human rights and the rights of the Great Barrier
Reef. Even though the complaint didn't specifically ask for the reef to have
legal personality, it did emphasise the need for more comprehensive legal
acknowledgment of nature's rights.
These incidents show how the need to
safeguard the natural world and the growing appreciation of its intrinsic
worth. The law recognises that habitats are endowed with intrinsic worth and
interests that must be maintained and upheld by giving them legal personality.
In 2017 Colombia’s Constitutional
Court granted legal personhood to Rio Atrato, a river that forms a part of a
biological hotspot, and flows through 91 different indigenous territories, for
whom the river bears tremendous significance being the source of both survival
and cultural beliefs.[2] The
decision established the river as “the subject of rights, which entails its
protection, conservation, maintenance, and, in the specific case, restoration.”
The order instructed the government to form the Atrato Guardians Commission
which would consist of 14 legal guardians from the indigenous communities in the
area, affected by gold mining and pollution. [3]However,
local groups are struggling to find a way to implement the orders.[4]
Many local governments in the United
States have granted legal rights to rivers and lakes, such as the Lake Erie, in
Ohio Bangladesh too declared all of its rivers as living entities,[5] so anyone
who damages the river can be taken to court by the government-appointed
National River Conservation Commission, and be tried as having harmed a living
entity, as the rivers have been granted the right to life
The various components of nature and
the environment in India are linked to customs and religious rituals and are
hence respected. Most water bodies have been identified with the god or goddess
in India. Like the Krishna, Ganga, and Yamuna, major waterways are worshipped
as deities and have been worshipped from time immemorial. Each of these
components of nature is crucial to people's lives.The notion of juristic
personality is not a novel idea; it has been witnessed and developed innumerable
instances in different cases and pieces of legislation. The honourable Supreme
Court of India established in the case of “T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad vs Union
of India and Others” that, given the realities of the environment and a need
for environmental justice, there is an outright need to transition from the
widespread anthropocentric standpoint to a new eco-centric stance.[6]
On the other hand, in the case of “Animal Welfare Board v. A.
Nagaraja,” where the honourable supreme court said. The Indian Constitution's
Article 21 right to life could also be applied to non-humans.[7]
Nevertheless, one of the most excellent example cases of environmental
personhood happened to come in the case of “Mohammed Salim v. the State of
Uttarakhand”[8] in 2017,
which asserted the recognition of two major religious rivers Yamuna and Ganga,
as legal persons, including all legal rights, duties, and responsibilities that
a living person has.
Subsequently, in the case of “Karnail Singh V.
State of Haryana”[9], a similar
verdict was made in the Punjab and Haryana high court. The court granted
complete entity to Haryana's animals for their security and permitted the
state's people to speak on their behalf. Likewise, in reply to a “2009
petition, in “Own Motion v. Chandigarh Admn”, the Punjab and Haryana high court
designated Sukhna Lake as a legal entity with the right to protect the lake
from being destroyed and overused by human beings”. "It also declared all
citizens of Chandigarh as loco parentis (in the place of a parent) to save the
lake from extinction."
Analysis
While one speaks input giving legal
personality to the environment, it is often observed that economic development
and growth will be hindered if the environment is given legal personality.
Although it is undeniable and obvious that primary the short term, some
progress would be sacrificed, we must not overlook the portion that will be
gained: high growth sustainability. According to the United Nations Environment
Programme, "nature protects us" when we conserve nature. It will take
time for each individual to think the eco-centric way, but we will indeed be
able to manage to live up to sustainable development goals.
Human beings dress up in different
roles (i.e. advocates, mediators, judges) to protect other humans. Still, the
environment that once was bountiful is now being stifled by the dominant nature
of human beings. It is undeniable that some human beings, such as
environmentalists, support and voice their opinions for the protection of
nature, but this is not enough to reverse the loss that has already been made
to the environment by humans. We can either choose to speak for the environment
or let it respins to us by its dire consequences, which may even eliminate
human existence. We know that the environment can per se speak, but we can be
the voice of the environment; we can be voices of a sustainable future
Providing personhood to the
environment and its components appears to become a bold response to
environmental conservation, but it does have a variety of benefits. This
enables a transition from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective of
such rules and regulations. Secondly, this gives people the ability to even go
to a court of law while also conserving the environment, thereby forming a
relationship. Thereafter, the commands seem to be more abstract, lacking
substantial definition. The fact that there is no precision raises plenty of
concerns on how such legislation and judgements will be implemented. These
legislations or judgements do not explicitly or implicitly express anything in
regard to whose and which rights would be preferred in case of conflict of
interests with the rights of human beings.
Environmental protection and
conservation efforts will be impacted in reality by the acknowledgement of the
environment's legal personality. The law can ensure that ecosystems and natural
resources are not considered as merely commodities or resources to be
exploited, but rather as living creatures with their own rights and interests
that must be safeguarded and respected. This is accomplished by giving
ecosystems and natural resources legal standing.
Conclusion
The fact that we can infer that the
concept of giving rights to the environment is jurisprudentially flawed. In
essence, the legal acknowledgment of the environment's legal personality is an
important and encouraging step in environmental policy and legislation. a
number of issues and constraints to be resolved, acknowledging the intrinsic
worth and rights of a physical world is an important step in the direction of a
fairer and more sustainable future for all. Another practical approach that can
be resorted to is to enforce and make the people of India aware of our duties
towards the environment and assert duties in the constitution of India. It
should be the state's duty to make it compulsory for all the area politically
elected representative’s citizens and to participate in cleanup programs for all
the damage that is already done. For instance, in Australia, the Murray Darling
Basin Authority estimates that almost 20% of its annual resources have been
committed to this work. [10]Whatever deity offered
regarding the nature of the universe has indeed been undone by the ruthless
character of humans. It sent out a dire
warning to humans that they should alter how they live. It has already
developed into a rat race of industrialization and urbanization. Man degrades the
environment through his gruesome ways just for the sake of development; all
that would be asked of the human is for them to abstain from expansion into the
environment to protect it.
Notwithstanding this, people assert
that humans are the most educated, intellectual beings, with harmony and unity
superiority over other species. Are we ignorant, oblivious to our mother earth?
[1] Aranya Chatterjee, Varun Wahane, Indian Journal of Law and Public Policy.
IJLPP, (April, 15,2022, 5am)
[2] Jen s Benöhr, Patrick J. Lyn ch , Should Rivers Have
Rights? A Growing Movement Says It’s About Time, YALE ENVIRONMENT 260 ( April
17, 2022, 11:00 PM)
[3]AHANA BAG, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEGAL SCIENCE AND
INNOVATION, Vol 3, IJLSI, Pg No 349-357)
[4] Laura Villa,
The Importance of the Atrato River in Colombia Gaining Legal Rights, EARTH LAW
CENTRE, April 18, 2022, 3:35AM) (https://www.earthlawcenter.org/blog-entries/2017/5/the-importance-of-the-atrato-river-incolombia-gaining-legal-rights)
[5] Sigal Samuel, Lake Erie now has legal rights, just
like you, VOX, April 18, 2022, 5:30 AM), (https://www.vox.com/fut
ure-perfect/2019/2/26/18241904/lake-erie-legal-rights-personhood-nature-environment-toledo-ohio)
[6] T.N.
Godavarman Thirumulpad vs Union Of India & Ors on 10 April, 2006, Indian
Kanoon (April 16, 2022, 7:19 PM)
[7] Animal
Welfare Board Of India vs A. Nagaraja & Ors on 7 May, 1949, Indian Kanoon (April 16, 2022, 9:05 PM)
[8] Salim v. State of
Uttarakhand, Writ Petition (PIL) No.126 of 2014 (December 5, 2016 and March 20,
2017), Environment law alliance worldwide,, Environment law alliance worldwide,
(April 17, 2022, 4:30 AM)
[9] Karnail
Singh vs State Of Haryana on 29 July, 2009,
Indian Kanoon (April 16, 2022, 3:00 PM)
[10] Australian Government,
Proposed Basin Plan consultation report, April 18 2022, 7:30 AM)
Article Information
Legal Personality To The Environment: An Analysis By: Chiranthana N Yadav & Nikhitha Naveen Kumar
Authors: Chiranthana N Yadav, Nikhitha Naveen Kumar
- Journal IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
- Published 2023/03/25
- Volume 2
- Issue 7
About Journal
International Journal for Legal Research and Analysis
- Abbreviation IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
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