Environment Protection-Significant Concepts and Principles — Sustainable development Polluter Pays Principle Precautionary Principle

A factory on the edge of Taloja discharges effluent into a creek. Fishermen downstream lose their catch. Two questions follow. Who pays for the damage? And could the damage have been stopped before a single fish died? Indian environmental law answers the first with the polluter pays principle and the second with the precautionary principle, and it holds both together under sustainable development. This topic also covers the tools that put those principles to work: environmental impact assessment, the eco-mark, the duty to future generations and the public trust doctrine.

In two minutes

Indian environmental decisions rest on a handful of principles (sustainable development, precaution, polluter pays, intergenerational equity and public trust) which Parliament has made binding on the National Green Tribunal by s.20 of the NGT Act 2010, and which are applied in practice through environmental impact assessment and the eco-mark.

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