Environmental Justice and Human Rights: The Right to a Healthy Environment, Environmental Inequality, Procedural Rights and Climate Justice

Pollution and ecological damage do not fall evenly. The families living beside a landfill, the tribal villages above a coal seam, the fishers downstream of an effluent drain, the children breathing a city's winter smog and the communities of the Sundarbans facing rising seas carry far more of the burden than those who enjoy the benefits of the activities that harm them. Environmental justice is the idea that environmental benefits and burdens should be fairly distributed, that all people should have a voice in decisions that affect their environment, and that those harmed should have effective remedies. It connects environmental law with human rights, and in India with the constitutional commitments to equality, life and social justice.

1. Environmental Justice: Meaning and Dimensions

Environmental justice has three dimensions:

1. Distributive justice: the fair distribution of environmental burdens (pollution, hazardous facilities, displacement) and benefits (clean air, green space, water, natural resources);
2. Procedural justice: fair and inclusive processes, through access to information, public participation in decisions, and access to justice (the three 'access rights'); and
3. Recognition justice: respect for the identities, knowledge and ways of life of marginalised groups, including indigenous and tribal peoples, whose relationship with land and forest is often ignored.

Some scholars add corrective or restorative justice (remedying past harm) and intergenerational justice (fairness to future generations). In India, environmental justice is closely tied to social justice: many of the people who bear environmental harm are also poor, Dalit, Adivasi, or informal workers.

2. Environmental Rights as Human Rights

2.1 International recognition

The link between environment and human rights was first stated in Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration (1972): 'Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being.' Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration (1992) set out the procedural rights of information, participation and access to justice. In October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council (Resolution 48/13), and on 28 July 2022, the UN General Assembly (Resolution 76/300), recognised the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The UN Special Rapporteur's Framework Principles on Human Rights and the Environment (2018) explain the obligations of States. More than 150 countries recognise the right in their constitutions, laws or regional treaties. The ICJ's 2025 advisory opinion on climate change also treats a healthy environment as a precondition for the enjoyment of human rights.

2.2 Right to a healthy environment in India

The Indian Constitution does not expressly guarantee the right, but the Supreme Court has read it into Article 21: Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (1985); M.C. Mehta (Oleum, 1987); Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, (1991) 1 SCC 598 (pollution-free water and air); Virender Gaur v. State of Haryana, (1995) 2 SCC 577 (environmental and ecological balance); A.P. Pollution Control Board v. Nayudu (1999 and 2001) (safe drinking water); and M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India (2024) (right against the adverse effects of climate change). The Directive Principle in Article 48A and the fundamental duty in Article 51A(g) reinforce the right. Article 14 adds equality: discriminatory environmental burdens may violate equal protection.

2.3 Procedural and substantive environmental rights

Substantive environmental rights protect the quality of the environment itself: the right to clean air, safe water, uncontaminated food, a stable climate and healthy ecosystems. Procedural environmental rights protect the means of securing it: the rights to information, participation and access to justice. The two reinforce each other: procedural rights allow people to defend substantive rights, and substantive rights give procedural rights meaning. Indian law provides procedural rights through the RTI Act, 2005, EIA public hearings, gram sabha consent under the Forest Rights Act, the citizen suit provisions, and relaxed standing in PIL and before the NGT.

3. Environmental Inequality and Environmental Racism

3.1 Environmental inequality

Environmental inequality describes the unequal exposure of social groups to environmental harms and unequal access to environmental goods. It arises through the siting of hazardous facilities where land is cheap and resistance weak, through markets (the poor live where housing is cheapest, often near pollution), and through political exclusion. In India, examples include the neighbourhoods around Delhi's landfills (Ghazipur, Bhalswa, Okhla), the villages of Singrauli and Korba amid coal mines and power plants, the Jharia coalfield fires, the Bhopal gas victims (overwhelmingly poor), the informal e-waste workers of Seelampur, and the manual scavengers exposed to sewage and toxic gases.

3.2 Environmental racism: a comparative concept

The term environmental racism emerged in the United States in the 1980s. Protests in Warren County, North Carolina (1982) against a PCB landfill in a predominantly Black community, and the United Church of Christ report 'Toxic Wastes and Race' (1987), showed that race was the strongest predictor of the location of hazardous waste sites. Scholars such as Robert Bullard developed the field. The US federal government responded with Executive Order 12898 (1994) requiring agencies to address disproportionate environmental effects on minority and low-income populations. The concept has been applied to indigenous peoples in Canada and Australia and to the export of hazardous waste to the Global South. In India the parallel concerns are caste, class and tribe: studies have documented the disproportionate siting of polluting activities near Dalit and Adivasi settlements.

4. Pollution and Vulnerable Communities

4.1 Environmental harm to rural communities

Rural communities bear the costs of mining, large dams, industrial corridors and groundwater depletion. They lose land, water and commons (grazing land, ponds, village forests), often without adequate compensation. The Narmada dam litigation (Narmada Bachao Andolan, 2000) highlighted displacement and rehabilitation; the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 requires social impact assessment and consent in certain cases. Protection of village commons (Jagpal Singh, 2011) and ponds (Hinch Lal Tiwari, 2001) is part of rural environmental justice.

4.2 Environmental harm to tribal communities

Adivasi communities live in the forests and mineral-rich areas of central and eastern India, and their lives are bound up with land and forest. Mining, dams, protected areas and plantations have displaced them repeatedly. Key legal protections include the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), and the Forest Rights Act, 2006. In Samatha v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1997) 8 SCC 191, the Supreme Court held that transfer of tribal land in Scheduled Areas to non-tribal private companies for mining was void. In Orissa Mining Corporation v. Ministry of Environment and Forest, (2013) 6 SCC 476 (Niyamgiri), it held that the gram sabhas of the Dongria Kondh must decide whether bauxite mining would affect their religious and cultural rights, and they rejected it. The 2023 amendments to forest conservation law and eviction orders against forest dwellers remain contested.

4.3 Environmental harm to children

Children are especially vulnerable: they breathe more air per kilogram of body weight, their organs are developing, and they will live longest with the consequences of today's pollution and climate change. Air pollution is a leading cause of child mortality from respiratory infection in India, and lead exposure harms cognitive development. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 24) requires States to consider the dangers of environmental pollution in securing the right to health, and General Comment No. 26 (2023) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child sets out children's right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment with a focus on climate change. In Arjun Gopal v. Union of India (2017), a petition filed on behalf of infants led to the ban on firecracker sales in Delhi NCR; in Ridhima Pandey (NGT, 2019), a child sought climate action.

4.4 Environmental health

Environmental health is the branch of public health concerned with how the environment affects human health: air and water quality, sanitation, chemical exposure, noise, heat and vector-borne diseases. The WHO estimates that environmental risk factors cause about a quarter of the global disease burden. Indian law addresses environmental health through pollution statutes, food safety law, the National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health, heat action plans, and the courts' recognition that the right to health is part of Article 21.

5. Access Rights: Information, Participation and Justice

5.1 Access to environmental information

People cannot protect their environment without knowing what is being done to it. The right to information is part of Article 19(1)(a) and Article 21, and is operationalised by the Right to Information Act, 2005. In Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy v. Union of India (2005), the Supreme Court held that the right to information and community participation for protection of the environment and human health is part of Article 21. EIA reports, consent orders, monitoring data and compliance reports are now largely public (Topic 50).

5.2 Public participation in environmental decision-making

Participation allows affected people to bring local knowledge, raise concerns and influence decisions. In India, it takes place through EIA public hearings, gram sabha consent and consultation (Forest Rights Act, PESA, Biological Diversity Act), consultations on draft notifications, and social impact assessment under the land acquisition law. Participation is meaningful only if it is informed, early, accessible (in local languages and at convenient locations), and taken into account in the final decision with reasons.

5.3 Access to environmental justice

Access to justice requires affordable, accessible and effective remedies. India's contributions are significant: PIL with relaxed standing and epistolary jurisdiction, the National Green Tribunal with benches in five cities and broad standing under Section 18, citizen suit provisions in the EPA, Water and Air Acts, and no-fault compensation schemes. Barriers remain: cost, distance, language, delay, and the difficulty of proving harm.

6. The Aarhus Convention and Environmental Democracy

6.1 The Aarhus Convention: a comparative note

The UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, adopted at Aarhus, Denmark on 25 June 1998 and in force from 30 October 2001, is the most developed treaty on procedural environmental rights. Its three pillars are: (i) access to information, requiring public authorities to disclose environmental information on request and actively; (ii) public participation in decisions on specific activities, plans, programmes and regulations, at an early stage when all options are open; and (iii) access to justice to challenge violations. It has a unique Compliance Committee to which members of the public can submit communications. It is a regional (European) treaty; India is not a party. Its Latin American counterpart is the Escazu Agreement (2018, in force 2021), which also protects environmental human rights defenders.

6.2 Environmental democracy

Environmental democracy is the idea that people have a right to participate meaningfully in decisions about their environment, through transparency, participation and accountability. It rests on Rio Principle 10 and the Aarhus pillars, and on the belief that decisions are better and more legitimate when those affected have a voice. In India, it is supported by the RTI Act, public hearings, gram sabha powers and PIL, but is challenged by exemptions from public hearings, post-facto clearances, weak consideration of objections, and threats to activists.

7. Climate Justice and Intergenerational Climate Justice

7.1 Climate justice

Climate justice applies environmental justice to climate change. Countries and people who contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions (small island States, the least developed countries, poor communities, women, indigenous peoples) suffer most from floods, droughts, heatwaves and sea-level rise. Climate justice therefore demands: differentiated responsibilities (CBDR-RC); finance and technology from the rich to the poor; adaptation support and loss and damage funding; a just transition for workers and communities dependent on fossil fuels; and protection of the most vulnerable within countries. India has championed climate justice internationally, and Ranjitsinh (2024) links it to the right to equality under Article 14, since climate impacts fall unequally.

7.2 Intergenerational climate justice

Intergenerational climate justice recognises that future generations will bear the consequences of emissions today, without any voice in present decisions. It draws on the doctrine of intergenerational equity (Edith Brown Weiss) and the public trust doctrine. Courts in several countries have given it legal effect: the German Constitutional Court in Neubauer (2021) held that the federal climate law unfairly shifted the burden of emission reductions to the future; youth-led cases have been brought in the United States (Juliana), Colombia (Future Generations v. Ministry of Environment, 2018) and India (Ridhima Pandey). In India, intergenerational equity has been recognised in State of Himachal Pradesh v. Ganesh Wood Products (1995) and Goa Foundation (2014), and supports net-zero targets and carbon budgets.

8. Critical Appraisal

India has a strong normative foundation for environmental justice: Article 21 and 14, PIL, the NGT, the Forest Rights Act and PESA. But the poorest communities still bear the heaviest environmental burdens, participation is often formal rather than real, compensation is slow, and development projects frequently override tribal and rural rights. Data on the social distribution of pollution is limited, and India has no explicit environmental justice policy. Strengthening access rights, mapping environmental inequality, protecting environmental defenders, and ensuring that climate policy protects the vulnerable would bring law closer to justice.

9. Related Topics and Provisions