ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE IN INDIA: EFFECTIVENESS OF THENATIONAL GREEN TRIBUNAL IN CLIMATE JUSTICE

Abstract

The National Green Tribunal (NGT), established under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, represents India’s most significant institutional experiment in specialist environmental adjudication. Over a decade and a half since its inception on 18 October 2010, the Tribunal has disposed of tens of thousands of cases, applied foundational principles such as the precautionary principle and the polluter pays doctrine, and intervened decisively in some of the country’s gravest ecological crises. Yet, questions persist about whether the NGT has meaningfully advanced climate justice—particularly for communities disproportionately burdened by pollution, industrial expansion, and climate-related disasters. This article examines the constitutional and statutory foundations of the NGT, traces the evolution of its jurisprudence through landmark decisions, critically evaluates its contribution to climate justice, and identifies structural impediments that must be addressed if the Tribunal is to remain a credible forum for environmental protection in an era of accelerating climate change.

INTRODUCTION

India occupies a peculiar position in the global climate narrative. It is simultaneously one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases and a nation whose 1.4 billion citizens—many of whom depend directly on rivers, forests, and monsoons—are acutely vulnerable to the consequences of a warming planet. In this context, environmental governance is not merely a policy concern; it is a matter of fundamental rights and social justice.[1]

The Indian judiciary has historically served as the country’s most responsive environmental regulator. Long before dedicated legislation existed, the Supreme Court of India was invoking Article 21 of the Constitution—the right to life—to protect citizens from industrial pollution. But judicial activism, however well-intentioned, is an imperfect substitute for expert-driven, specialised adjudication. Recognising this, Parliament enacted the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, to create a forum that could combine legal authority with scientific competence.[2]

Climate justice, as a concept, demands more than environmental protection in the abstract. It requires that the costs and consequences of environmental degradation not be disproportionately borne by the poor, the marginalised, and future generations. It asks whether law—and the institutions that apply it—are capable of holding the powerful accountable while amplifying the voices of the vulnerable. Whether the NGT has fulfilled this promise is the central question this article sets out to answer.

CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY FOUNDATIONS

Constitutional Moorings

India’s environmental constitution rests on three pillars. Article 21, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to encompass the right to a clean, healthy environment. Article 48A imposes a duty on the State to protect and improve the environment, while Article 51A(g) casts a corresponding fundamental duty on every citizen to protect the natural environment.[3]

These provisions supplied the normative scaffolding for years of judicial activism before dedicated environmental legislation matured. The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1988), concerning tannery pollution of the river Ganga, demonstrated both the promise and the limitation of that approach—the Court could order compliance, but lacked the scientific apparatus to monitor it over time.[4]

The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010

Enacted as Act No. 19 of 2010, the National Green Tribunal Act came into force on 18 October 2010. The Act draws explicitly from Article 21, its preamble describing the Tribunal’s purpose as providing “effective and expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources.” Section 3 authorised the Central Government to establish the Tribunal by notification, which it did on the same date of commencement.[5]

The jurisdiction of the NGT is defined primarily under Section 14, which confers original jurisdiction over all civil cases involving a “substantial question relating to environment” arising from any enactment listed in Schedule I. That Schedule covers the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974; the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980; the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981; the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986; the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991; and the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. Section 15 empowers the Tribunal to award relief, compensation, and restitution for environmental damage, while Section 16 grants appellate jurisdiction over orders passed under those Schedule I statutes.[6]

Section 20 is particularly significant for environmental jurisprudence: it mandates that the Tribunal apply the principles of sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and the polluter pays principle when making its orders. Non-compliance with Tribunal directions can attract imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of up to ₹10 crore, rising to ₹25 crore for companies. The Tribunal is composed of a chairperson (a retired Supreme Court judge or Chief Justice of a High Court), Judicial Members, and Expert Members with qualifications in environmental science, engineering, or technology—a design intended to fuse legal and scientific expertise.[7]

III. LANDMARK JURISPRUDENCE: A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY

Pre-NGT Foundations (1985–2010)

No analysis of the NGT’s jurisprudence is complete without acknowledging the foundational work of the Supreme Court. In M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 3727 of 1985), the Court addressed the catastrophic pollution of the river Ganga from tanneries and industrial effluents in Kanpur. In its landmark judgment of 12 January 1988, the Court ordered the closure of polluting tanneries and established that an industry unable to operate without polluting the environment has no right to continue operations—a principle that would animate the NGT’s jurisprudence for decades.[8]

The doctrine of absolute liability—a departure from the English rule of Rylands v. Fletcher—was established in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (Oleum Gas Leak, 1986), where the Court held that enterprises engaged in hazardous activities are absolutely liable for harm caused, without the defence of acts of God or third parties. Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India (1996) introduced the precautionary and polluter pays principles into Indian constitutional law, recognising them as part of customary international law binding on India.[9]

Early NGT Era: Institutional Confidence (2011–2013)

Among the first significant tests of the fledgling Tribunal was Almitra H. Patel & Ors. v. Union of India (2012). The petitioners sought urgent reform of India’s solid waste management practices. The Tribunal found that over a lakh tonnes of untreated municipal solid waste was being dumped daily, noted the absence of proper sanitary landfills across most of the country, and issued directions requiring the states to formulate time-bound action plans. The case established the NGT as a proactive forum capable of monitoring ongoing environmental defaults across the entire country.[10]

In Save Mon Region Federation & Ors. v. Union of India (2013), the Tribunal demonstrated its willingness to take on major infrastructure projects. The NGT suspended the environmental clearance granted to a ₹6,400 crore hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh, finding the clearance process to have been procedurally flawed and substantively inadequate. The application of the precautionary principle to a project of this scale—where  ecological and cultural consequences for indigenous communities were potentially irreversible—signalled the NGT’s ambition to be more than a mere compliance monitor.[11]

Consolidation and Expansion (2014–2016)

Srinagar Bandh Aapda Sangharsh Samiti & Anr. v. Alaknanda Hydro Power Co. Ltd. (2014) arose from the devastating 2013 Uttarakhand floods, which caused massive loss of life and property. The NGT ordered Alaknanda Hydro Power Company to pay compensation to affected families, applying the polluter pays principle to hold a private infrastructure developer liable for contributing to natural disaster risk through inadequate environmental safeguards. The case is a landmark in climate justice—it directly linked corporate environmental negligence to disaster vulnerability.[12]

Vardhaman Kaushik v. Union of India (2014) addressed Delhi’s worsening air quality. The Tribunal directed the Central Pollution Control Board to take coercive action against non-compliant industries and set strict timelines for the phasing out of polluting vehicles. While implementation remained patchy, the case established that urban air pollution is justiciable and that citizens have an enforceable right to breathe clean air—a right with direct climate justice implications, given that air pollution disproportionately harms the urban poor.[13]

Manoj Mishra v. Union of India & Ors. (OA No. 06/2012) concerned the relentless degradation of the Yamuna river. In a landmark judgment delivered in January 2015, the NGT constituted the Yamuna Monitoring Committee and issued a comprehensive, phased action plan requiring zero liquid discharge from industrial clusters, the establishment of sewage treatment plants, and the removal of encroachments from the floodplain. The Tribunal’s approach combining adjudicative authority with ongoing supervisory oversight—has become a template for its management of long-term ecological restoration.[14]

The Art of Living Foundation Case (2016) brought the polluter pays principle to public spectacle. Following the World Cultural Festival organised on the ecologically fragile Yamuna floodplains in March 2016, the NGT held the Art of Living Foundation liable for damage to the floodplain ecosystem and imposed a fine of ₹5 crore as environmental compensation. The judgment sent a clear message that no event however culturally prominent could claim immunity from environmental accountability.[15]

Recent Directions: Climate-Sensitive Interventions (2018–2024)

In 2018 and 2019, the Tribunal took suo motu cognizance of the closure of 248 illegal mines in the Western Ghats, ordering compliance with the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and directing the Karnataka government to relocate a highway away from a critical wildlife corridor. These interventions, while framed in terms of forest law, carry unmistakable climate relevance: the Western Ghats are a globally recognised biodiversity hotspot and carbon sink whose degradation accelerates both local climate impacts and global warming.

In March 2024, the Supreme Court of India, in M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India—widely known as the Great Indian Bustard case—explicitly acknowledged for the first time a constitutional right against the adverse effects of climate change, drawing on developments in international and comparative climate litigation. While this was a Supreme Court ruling, it substantially strengthens the normative environment in which the NGT operates and augurs well for a more direct engagement with climate change claims in future NGT proceedings.

THE NGT’S CONTRIBUTION TO CLIMATE JUSTICE: AN ASSESSMENT

Democratisation of Environmental Access

Perhaps the NGT’s most underappreciated contribution to climate justice is procedural. By expanding locus standi—the right to be heard—to any person, and by interpreting the word “person” in the NGT Act broadly enough to include non-citizens, the Tribunal has dismantled the elite-capture that traditionally dominated environmental litigation. Civil society groups, tribal communities, fisherfolk, and urban residents have all found a forum willing to hear their concerns without the procedural formalities and financial barriers of ordinary civil courts.[16]

The NGT’s low filing fees, its five regional benches spread across New Delhi, Pune, Bhopal, Chennai, and Kolkata, and its statutory mandate to dispose of cases within six months have collectively made environmental justice more accessible to those communities most exposed to climate risk communities that would otherwise lack the resources to pursue environmental litigation in the High Courts or the Supreme Court.

Operationalising Key Environmental Principles

The NGT has been instrumental in translating the precautionary principle, the polluter pays principle, and the public trust doctrine from abstract international norms into enforceable domestic obligations. In doing so, it has built a body of precedent that while not yet fully integrated with India’s emerging climate change framework provides the conceptual tools for climate accountability.

The Tribunal’s consistent application of the polluter pays principle to large infrastructure projects, industrial polluters, and even cultural events has begun to price environmental harm into economic decision-making. If extended to carbon-intensive industries and fossil fuel projects, these principles could serve as the doctrinal foundation for genuine climate accountability.

Limitations and Structural Challenges

Notwithstanding these contributions, the NGT’s effectiveness in advancing climate justice faces several serious structural constraints. First, the Tribunal’s jurisdiction is tethered to Schedule I of the NGT Act a list that does not include the Indian Forest Act, 1927, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, or any standalone climate legislation. This creates a jurisdictional gap: the NGT cannot directly adjudicate claims rooted in climate change impacts unless they can be shoehorned into one of the Schedule I statutes.

Second, the NGT lacks an independent enforcement wing. Compliance with its orders depends on executive agencies state governments, pollution control boards, and municipal corporations whose commitment to implementation is variable at best. The Ganga and Yamuna river cases are instructive: despite years of detailed NGT directions, water quality in both rivers remains severely degraded, and the gap between judicial aspiration and ground reality remains wide.

Third, the Tribunal is severely under-resourced. As of December 2025, there were six vacant judicial member posts and four vacant expert member posts, against a statutory strength of ten to twenty in each category. Only six judicial members were actually sitting, against a requirement of twenty. The result is a mounting backlog 88,400 environmental cases were reported as pending before regular courts in 2022 alone and compromised quality of adjudication in complex multi-disciplinary disputes.

Fourth, the frequent appeals from NGT orders to the Supreme Court under Article 136 of the Constitution, and the tendency of appellate courts to stay Tribunal directions pending appeal, systematically dilutes the urgency that environmental disputes demand. Penalties, once imposed, are often reduced on appeal, weakening the deterrent effect of the polluter pays principle.

CLIMATE JUSTICE AND THE ROAD AHEAD

India’s climate ambitions its Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, 2015, and its pledge of net zero emissions by 2070 require institutional infrastructure capable of holding both state and non-state actors accountable for climate commitments. The NGT, with its combination of legal authority and expert membership, is structurally better positioned to perform this function than any other existing body. But several reforms are necessary.

The most urgent reform is jurisdictional expansion. Parliament should amend Schedule I of the NGT Act to include the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the Indian Forest Act, 1927, and—crucially—any future climate change legislation. India currently operates without a standalone Climate Change Act, a gap that limits the ability of courts and tribunals to adjudicate climate claims. The introduction of such legislation, with the NGT as the designated adjudicatory forum, would be a transformative step.

The Tribunal also needs to develop a coherent climate jurisprudence that goes beyond individual pollution incidents to address systemic climate risk. This would involve recognising climate-vulnerable communities as a protected class of litigants, applying the precautionary principle to carbon-intensive approvals, and integrating climate impact assessments into its review of Environmental Clearances.

On the institutional side, all vacant judicial and expert member posts should be filled immediately. Additional regional benches and circuit courts should be established in ecologically sensitive areas such as the Himalayan foothills, the coastal zones, and the Northeast. The Tribunal should be given a dedicated enforcement mechanism perhaps a Green Enforcement Authority with the power to monitor compliance and impose escalating penalties without requiring repeated return to the Tribunal.

International comparisons are instructive. New Zealand’s Environment Court and Australia’s Land and Environment Court of New South Wales have built rich bodies of climate-sensitive jurisprudence rooted in statutory environmental impact assessment frameworks and enforceable compliance mechanisms. India’s NGT has the intellectual and constitutional raw material to match these models; what it needs is the political will to be given the resources and independence to do so.

CONCLUSION

The National Green Tribunal has, in the fifteen years since its establishment, earned a legitimate place in India’s institutional landscape. It has made environmental justice more accessible, applied progressive legal principles to powerful actors, and produced a body of jurisprudence that any country with serious environmental challenges would be proud of.

Yet the measure of a climate justice institution cannot be the quality of its orders alone. It must also be measured by whether communities living on floodplains still flood, whether urban residents still breathe toxic air, and whether rivers continue to run black with untreated effluent. By those measures the measures that matter most to the people who need climate justice the NGT’s record is mixed.

The Tribunal’s challenges are not primarily of its own making. They are the product of inadequate resourcing, fragmented governance, an enforcement architecture that depends on agencies with competing priorities, and a jurisdictional framework that was not designed for the era of climate litigation. Addressing these structural deficits is the unfinished business of Indian environmental governance.

If India is serious about its climate commitments and about the constitutional promise of a dignified life for all its citizens it must invest in the NGT as an institution of climate justice: properly staffed, adequately funded, jurisdictionally complete, and equipped to enforce its own orders. The law, as this article has sought to show, already points in that direction. The remaining question is whether the political will exists to follow it.

Reference(S):

[1]M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 838 of 2019 (Supreme Court of India, March 2024); Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (IPCC 2022).

[2]National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, Act No. 19 of 2010 (India); M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1988) 1 SCC 471.

[3]Constitution of India, arts. 21, 48A, 51A(g); Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, (1991) 1 SCC 598.

[4]M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (Kanpur Tanneries), Writ Petition (Civil) No. 3727 of 1985, decided 12 January 1988, (1988) 1 SCC 471.

[5]National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 (India), preamble and s. 3; Government of India Notification No. S.O. 2570(E), 18 October 2010.

[6]National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 (India), ss. 14, 15, 16, Sch. I.

[7]National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 (India), ss. 4, 20, 26; Nishtha Sinha, ‘The National Green Tribunal in India: Examining the Question of Jurisdiction’ (2018) 21(2) Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law 190.

[8]M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (Ganga Pollution Case), Writ Petition (Civil) No. 3727 of 1985, (1988) 1 SCC 471.

[9]M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (Oleum Gas Leak), (1987) 1 SCC 395; Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, (1996) 5 SCC 647.

[10]Almitra H. Patel & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors., National Green Tribunal, Original Application No. 199/2014 (2012)

[11]Save Mon Region Federation & Ors. v. Union of India, National Green Tribunal, Original Application No. 39/2012, decided 2013.

[12]Srinagar Bandh Aapda Sangharsh Samiti & Anr. v. Alaknanda Hydro Power Co. Ltd., National Green Tribunal, Original Application No. 23/2013, decided 2014

[13]Vardhaman Kaushik v. Union of India, National Green Tribunal, Original Application No. 21/2014, decided 2014.

[14]Manoj Mishra v. Union of India & Ors., National Green Tribunal, Original Application No. 06/2012, judgment delivered January 2015

[15]Manoj Mishra v. Union of India (Art of Living Foundation), National Green Tribunal, Original Application No. 65/2016, decided 2016

[16]. National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 (India)