Intergenerational equity and the public trust doctrine

1. Intergenerational equity: meaning

Every generation receives the natural and cultural heritage of the earth from those before it and holds it in trust for those after. It may use the resources, but it must pass them on in no worse condition. The idea is associated with Edith Brown Weiss, who stated three principles:

• conservation of options: keep the diversity of the natural and cultural resource base so that future generations have choices;
• conservation of quality: leave the planet in no worse condition than it was received; and
• conservation of access: give members of the present generation equitable access to the legacy and preserve that access for the future.

International sources: Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration, 1972 (man bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations); Principle 3 of the Rio Declaration, 1992 (the right to development must be fulfilled so as to meet equitably the developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations); and the Brundtland definition of sustainable development (meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs). It also has a second dimension, intragenerational equity: fairness among people living now, between rich and poor, and between developed and developing countries.

2. Intergenerational equity in Indian courts

• State of Tamil Nadu v. Hind Stone, 1981 INSC 25, (1981) 2 SCC 205. Upholding a State rule that reserved the quarrying of black granite to the State, Chinnappa Reddy J. said that rivers, forests, minerals and such other resources constitute the nation's natural wealth, are not to be frittered away and exhausted by any one generation, and that every generation owes a duty to all succeeding generations to develop and conserve them in the best possible way. This is the earliest Indian statement of the idea.
• Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, 1996 INSC 952, (1996) 5 SCC 647, treated intergenerational equity as one of the salient principles of sustainable development.
• Lafarge Umiam Mining Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India, 2011 INSC 461, (2011) 7 SCC 338. Upholding limestone mining in Meghalaya with conditions, a three-judge Bench held that the use of natural resources must be consistent with sustainable development and intergenerational equity, that balancing these may involve policy choices, and that courts should review such decisions on proportionality rather than substitute their own view on the merits.
• M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 280, recognising a right against the adverse effects of climate change, rests on the same concern: climate harm falls on those who come later and on the vulnerable now.

3. The public trust doctrine: origin

Roman law treated certain things as common to all by natural law: the air, running water, the sea and the seashore. The Institutes of Justinian said these could not be owned privately. English common law took over the idea for navigable waters and the foreshore, held by the Crown for the public. American courts developed it into a limit on government:

• Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. Illinois (US Supreme Court, 1892): a legislature could not give away the bed of Lake Michigan to a railway company, because it held the lake in trust for the people for navigation and fishing.
• National Audubon Society v. Superior Court (Supreme Court of California, 1983), the Mono Lake case: the State's diversion of streams feeding Mono Lake had to be reconsidered, because the trust extends to ecological and recreational values and imposes a continuing duty of supervision.
• Professor Joseph Sax's article of 1970 gave the doctrine its modern form: certain interests are so important to the public that the government may not dispose of them for private gain, and any such disposal is to be scrutinised by the courts.

4. M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1996)

In M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath, 1996 INSC 1482, (1997) 1 SCC 388, decided on 13 December 1996 by Kuldip Singh and Saghir Ahmad JJ., the Court acted on a newspaper report. Span Motels, a company with which the family of a former Union Minister was connected, ran a motel on the bank of the river Beas near Kullu. The Himachal Pradesh Government had leased it riparian forest land, and the motel had used bulldozers to block and divert the river to protect its premises from floods, damaging the ecology of the valley.

• The Court held that the public trust doctrine is part of the law of India. The State is the trustee of natural resources such as rivers, forests, sea-shores and the air, which are meant for public use and enjoyment; the public is the beneficiary.
• The State, as trustee, is under a legal duty to protect them, and cannot convert them into private ownership or allow their use for commercial purposes that destroy their natural character.
• The prior approval and the lease of the forest land were quashed; the State was directed to take over the area and restore it; the motel was made to pay compensation for restitution under the polluter pays principle and to show cause why it should not pay exemplary damages. The later order of 2000 (2000 INSC 329) dealt with the amount and held that a pollution fine cannot be imposed without a trial.

5. Later applications

• Intellectuals Forum, Tirupathi v. State of A.P., 2006 INSC 101, (2006) 3 SCC 549. The State had handed over the beds of two ancient tanks, Peruru and Avilala, to the Tirupathi Urban Development Authority for housing. The Court applied the public trust doctrine to these water bodies, read it with Articles 48A and 51A(g), and directed that no further construction be allowed on the Peruru tank bed and that it be restored, while allowing the housing already built on the Avilala tank to stand with conditions. It also described the elements of sustainable development, including the precautionary principle and the carrying capacity of the ecosystem.
• The doctrine has been used to protect parks and open spaces from conversion (the line from Virender Gaur, 1994), and in cases on the allocation of natural resources such as minerals and spectrum, where the Court has said that natural resources are held by the State in trust and must be allocated for the common good, consistently with Article 39(b).

6. Carrying capacity

The syllabus objective names carrying capacity. It is the maximum population of a species, or level of human activity, that an ecosystem can support indefinitely without degrading it. In law it shows up as limits on the number of industries or vehicles in an airshed (the Taj Trapezium Zone), on tourist numbers in hill stations and on construction in eco-sensitive zones. It is usually presented as a component of sustainable development, together with precaution and polluter pays.

How this is examined

June 2025 set “inter-generational equity principle” and August 2024 “public trust doctrine” as 6-mark notes. For intergenerational equity, give Brown Weiss's three principles, Stockholm Principle 1, Hind Stone and Lafarge. For public trust, give the Roman root, Illinois Central and Mono Lake in one line each, then the facts and holding of Kamal Nath, then Intellectuals Forum. In a problem on the lease of a lake or river bank to a private resort, Kamal Nath is the controlling authority.