Title: JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TO PROTECT THE FUTURE INDIAN SCENARIO

LAw

Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It represents endeavour towards integration between environment and development which marked the debate on protection of environment in the early seventies and late eighties of the last century. The journey from Stockholm to Rio via Brundtland Report highlights the shifting focus on one and the other and final culmination into this harmonious integration. The Rio Declaration, unlike the Stockholm declaration, attaches greater importance to social environment over physical environment. It achieves a balance between the substantive requirements of sustainable development and procedural requirements for implementing environmental protection. With human rights as the focus of sustainable development, the Declaration attempts to create a harmonious and equilibrated world society. Justice, equity and fair play become key words in the present task of restructuring the world community on the basis of sustainable development. In the above backdrop, the author of this paper has tried to evaluate the international endeavour to protect the environment including the sustainable development goals. This paper also includes a quick review of the numerous laws and the fundamental values inherent in the Indian Constitution. Through its several epoch-making judgements on environmental protection, the Indian judiciary has reinforced the notions of polluter pays principle and precautionary principle. Thus, environmental development symbiosis is noted to be a favoured societal objective aiming at achieving social welfare and benefit of clean and healthy environment as well as economic progress for everybody. Environmental protection is as much a part of the right to life as addressing everyone's needs via the development process.

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