Environment and Human Rights

Law of Intellectual Property Rights, Human Rights and Environment · Unit I · Topic 3 of 17 · 6 min read

Three ways of linking environment and human rights (greening existing rights, procedural rights, a free-standing right), the regional and UN developments from Stockholm Principle 1 to UNGA Resolution 76/300 and the 2025 ICJ climate opinion, the Indian Article 21 case law from Dehradun quarries to M.K. Ranjitsinh, and the anthropocentric-ecocentric debate.

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On this page

1. Why the link was made
2. Three approaches
3. India: the right through Article 21
4. Communities and forests
5. Anthropocentric and ecocentric views
6. Why this matters for IP
How this is examined

Cases checked to exist. Read the judgment before quoting a holding.

Every case cited here has been checked to exist — the citation resolves and names the right parties. The propositions attributed to each case have not been verified line by line against the judgment. Case names link through to the full judgment: read it before quoting a holding in an examination answer, and never carry a proposition from notes into court on trust.

The examinable core. Is there a human right to a healthy environment, and if so where does it come from? Give three routes (existing rights, procedural rights, a separate right), show each with international and Indian authority, and then take a position on the ecocentric criticism that a rights framing protects people and not nature.

1. Why the link was made

Environmental harm falls first on the poor: the communities beside the factory, the farmers whose water table falls, the forest dwellers displaced by a dam. Human rights law offers what environmental regulation often lacks: a claimant, a court and a remedy. Environmental law in turn gives human rights law a way to speak of future generations. The Stockholm Declaration (1972), Principle 1, joined the two: people have a fundamental right to adequate conditions of life in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and bear a responsibility to protect it for present and future generations.

2. Three approaches

(a) Greening existing rights. Courts read environmental protection into the rights to life, health, private and family life, and property. The European Court of Human Rights has no environmental article, but in López Ostra v. Spain (1994) it held that severe pollution from a waste plant next to the applicant’s home violated Article 8; Guerra v. Italy (1998) added a duty to inform residents of risks; Öneryildiz v. Turkey (2004) found a breach of the right to life after a methane explosion at a rubbish tip. In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz v. Switzerland (Grand Chamber, 2024) the Court held that Article 8 includes a right to effective protection by the state from the serious adverse effects of climate change, and found Switzerland in breach.

(b) Procedural rights. Rio Principle 10 calls for access to information, public participation and access to justice. The Aarhus Convention (UNECE, 1998) made these binding in Europe and Central Asia; the Escazú Agreement (2018) did the same for Latin America and the Caribbean and is the first treaty with specific protection for environmental human rights defenders. Environmental impact assessment with public hearings, as under India’s EIA Notification 2006, belongs to this approach.

(c) A free-standing right.

Regional: Article 24 of the African Charter (1981) and Article 11 of the San Salvador Protocol (1988) to the American Convention. The Inter-American Court’s Advisory Opinion OC-23/17 (2017) treated the right as autonomous and protecting nature’s components even apart from human harm.
National: well over a hundred constitutions now recognise it in some form.
UN: the Special Rapporteur John Knox’s Framework Principles on Human Rights and the Environment (2018); Human Rights Council Resolution 48/13 (October 2021) and General Assembly Resolution 76/300 (28 July 2022), recognising the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. These resolutions are not binding, but the large majority and the absence of votes against give them weight as evidence of opinion.
The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states in respect of climate change (July 2025) treated a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a precondition for enjoying many other human rights, and read states’ human rights obligations together with their climate treaty duties.

3. India: the right through Article 21

India has no express environmental right in Part III. The Supreme Court derived it from Article 21, read with Articles 48A and 51A(g) (see the Unit III note on the Constitution):

Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra v. State of U.P., 1985 INSC 49: limestone quarrying in the Dehradun valley was stopped; the first environmental PIL treated under Article 32.
M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, 1986 INSC 281 (oleum gas leak): absolute liability for hazardous industries, with no exceptions of the Rylands v. Fletcher kind.
Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, 1991 INSC 3: the right to life includes the right to enjoyment of pollution-free water and air; but PIL cannot be used for a private grudge, and this petition was dismissed.
Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, 1996 INSC 952: sustainable development, the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle are part of the law of the land.
M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath, 1996 INSC 1482: the public trust doctrine.
Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India, 2000 INSC 489: the dam was allowed to proceed with rehabilitation conditions; the Court balanced the right to water of drought areas against the rights of the displaced, a reminder that human rights can be invoked on both sides of a development project.
M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 280 (great Indian bustard and power lines): the Court recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change, drawn from Articles 14 and 21, and noted India’s international climate commitments. It modified an earlier blanket order to bury transmission lines and set up an expert committee.

4. Communities and forests

For forest dwellers the environment is livelihood and identity. The Forest Rights Act, 2006 recognises individual and community forest rights and gives gram sabhas a role in conservation. In Orissa Mining Corporation v. Ministry of Environment and Forest, 2013 INSC 267 (Niyamgiri), the Court required the gram sabhas of the Dongria Kondh to decide whether bauxite mining would affect their religious, cultural and community rights; they rejected the project. This is the point where environmental rights, indigenous rights and (in Unit IV) rights over traditional knowledge and biological resources overlap.

5. Anthropocentric and ecocentric views

A human right to environment is anthropocentric: nature is protected because people need it. Ecocentric writers argue that this subordinates nature to human use. Indian courts have moved both ways:

In Centre for Environment Law, WWF-I v. Union of India, 2013 INSC 254 (translocation of Asiatic lions), the Court spoke of an ecocentric approach and the interest of the species itself.
The Uttarakhand High Court in Mohd. Salim v. State of Uttarakhand (2017) declared the Ganga and Yamuna legal persons; the Supreme Court stayed the order the same year. Ecuador’s Constitution (2008) gives nature rights; New Zealand gave legal personality to the Whanganui River by statute in 2017.

The debate. Supporters say the rights framing gives standing and remedies that regulation lacks, and the 2022 UN recognition makes it part of the mainstream. Critics raise three points: (1) the right is vague, so courts end up making policy through continuing mandamus; (2) it can be invoked by both sides, as in Narmada; (3) it protects people now living better than future generations or nature. A balanced answer says the right works best as a procedural and interpretive tool, backed by statutory duties, which is what the Indian courts have in practice done.

6. Why this matters for IP

The rights to health, food and a healthy environment are the human rights against which patents on medicines and seeds and the use of biological resources are tested later in this paper. Two examples: section 3(b) of the Patents Act excludes inventions whose use would seriously prejudice the environment; and the transfer of patented clean technology to developing countries is treated in climate law as a condition of their meeting emission targets (Unit V).

How this is examined

Likely long questions: “Is the right to a healthy environment a human right? Discuss with reference to international instruments and Indian case law,” or “Examine the role of the Indian judiciary in recognising environmental rights under Article 21.” Short notes: Stockholm Principle 1; UNGA Resolution 76/300; the Aarhus Convention; Subhash Kumar; the right against climate change in M.K. Ranjitsinh. Use the three approaches as the frame and end with the ecocentric debate.