Establishment of Green Courts in India and Their Role in Discharging Climate Justice—A Jurisprudential Analysis

The theoretical base of the advocacy for green courts as a forum of social transformation by doing environmental and climate justice can be found from the arguments proposed by the supporters of specialized courts debate. Specialized forums, it is contended, are able to evolve superior procedural norms and develop better quality of jurisprudence through expert judges who have greater exposure to a homogeneous legal policy regime. They bring uniformity, consistency, and predictability in decision-making which enhances public confidence and helps in development of a rich body of environmental justice jurisprudence. Incidental benefits include time and cost savings as the requirement of massive documentation for understanding technical points of law in the special field is averted and streamlined procedures make litigation easier and quicker. Though there are pitfalls, like tunnel vision and capture by interest groups, yet, in view of the practical necessity, specialization appears to be an inevitable phenomenon and the field of environmental law has produced two excellent examples of successful forums in Australia and New Zealand. Environmental courts and tribunals (ECT) are being rapidly growing throughout the world and are becoming important phenomena of 21st century environmental law. As of January, 2016, the numbers of specialist courts (ECT) have grown to 1,200 in 44 countries. The amazing growth of ECT worldwide is quite interesting as there are no international treaties or convention specifically requiring the states to create special environmental courts. Principle 10 of the Rio-Declaration is often quoted as the basis of creation of environmental courts, which in fact talks about “effective access to justice and administrative proceeding” and nowhere puts obligations to the members to constitute environmental courts. Australia and New Zealand had already taken a lead in creating environmental courts in their jurisdiction respectively but establishment of environmental court called as green tribunal has lacked far behind due to many reasons and no doubt one of the prominent reasons out of so many was the reluctance on the part of the government, despite the fact that Supreme Court plays proactive role in establishing environmental courts by giving decisions in one or the other case. The present paper highlights the origin of environmental courts named as green tribunals in India and their role as dispenser of justice to the victims of pollution and to the environment itself and also highlights its flaws and good points (Sharma, 2008, p. 50)