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Biodiversity law, the National Green Tribunal and the principles of environmental law

Environmental laws and bodies · Part 3 / 3 · Fact-checked on 8 November 2026 · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002, its three tiers, access rules, benefit sharing and the 2023 amendment; the National Green Tribunal, its benches and seven Acts; Article 21 and public interest litigation; absolute liability, polluter pays, the precautionary principle and the public trust doctrine; the Central Zoo Authority and Animal Welfare Board; and which body sits under which law.

This last part of the chapter takes up three things the first two parts left out. The first is the law on living resources: the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, which decides who may take India's plants, animals and microbes, and the knowledge tied to them, and on what terms. The second is the National Green Tribunal, the specialised court that has heard most environmental disputes since 2010. The third is the set of principles the Supreme Court built while reading a healthy environment into the right to life: absolute liability, the polluter pays principle, the precautionary principle and the public trust doctrine. The part closes with a few smaller bodies and a table of every law in the chapter beside the body that runs it.

India signed the Convention on Biological Diversity at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and ratified it in 1994. The Convention accepts that each country has sovereign rights over its own biological resources, and it expects the gains from using them to be shared fairly with those who conserved them. Patents had also been granted abroad on uses of turmeric and neem long known in Indian homes. This taking of resources or knowledge without consent is often called bio-piracy. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 was Parliament's answer. It builds a three-tier structure. At the national level is the National Biodiversity Authority, set up in 2003 and based at Chennai. Each state has a State Biodiversity Board. At the bottom, every local body, rural or urban, is to form a Biodiversity Management Committee.

The core of the Act is a set of permission rules, and which rule applies depends on who is asking. A foreign national, a non-resident Indian or a foreign-controlled company needs the prior approval of the National Biodiversity Authority before it obtains any biological resource occurring in India, or knowledge associated with it, for research or commercial use. NBA approval is also required before a patent or other intellectual property right is secured on an invention based on Indian material. Indian citizens and Indian companies face a lighter test: they give prior intimation to the State Biodiversity Board before commercial use. Local people and communities of the area, including growers and cultivators, and vaids and hakims who practise traditional medicine, are kept outside these controls. Suppose a European cosmetics firm wants a cream made from a Western Ghats herb: it must go to the NBA first and accept benefit-sharing terms.

Benefit sharing is how the Act turns permission into fairness. When the NBA approves a request it fixes terms of access and benefit sharing, which may be money, a share of royalties, joint research, transfer of technology or support for the local people who looked after the resource. Payments go to the National Biodiversity Fund and, where the holders of the resource or knowledge can be identified, are passed on to them. In each village or town the biodiversity management committee documents local plants, animals, crop varieties and the knowledge around them in a People's Biodiversity Register. This record matters as evidence: it shows that a remedy or a seed belonged to a community before an outsider claimed it. Separately, a state government may, after consulting local bodies, notify places of special biodiversity value as biodiversity heritage sites; the first, in 2007, was the Nallur Tamarind Grove in Karnataka.

The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 shifted the balance of the law towards ease of use. It aimed to ease compliance and to encourage the cultivation of medicinal plants. Registered AYUSH practitioners and users of codified traditional knowledge, meaning knowledge set down in classical texts, were freed from giving prior intimation to state boards. Approval for intellectual property rights is now needed before the right is actually granted, not before the application is filed. Offences, which earlier could lead to imprisonment, were decriminalised and replaced by monetary penalties. The three-tier structure of authority, boards and committees was kept unchanged.

Environmental cases once lingered for years in ordinary courts, and judges often lacked the scientific support such disputes need. The Supreme Court had more than once suggested environment courts with expert members, and earlier laws of 1995 and 1997 made little difference in practice. The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 created a single specialised body, and the National Green Tribunal was set up on 18 October 2010. Its principal bench sits in New Delhi, with zonal benches at Bhopal, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai. The chairperson must have been a judge of the Supreme Court or Chief Justice of a High Court. Beside the judicial members sit expert members with scientific or administrative experience of the environment, between ten and twenty of each kind.

The tribunal's reach is fixed by seven Acts listed in Schedule I of the 2010 Act: the Water Act, 1974, the Water Cess Act, 1977, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, the Air Act, 1981, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991 and the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. It hears civil cases raising a substantial question relating to the environment under these laws, and appeals against orders made under them, and can order compensation and restoration. Note what is missing: the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, the Indian Forest Act, 1927 and the Forest Rights Act, 2006. An application must normally be filed within six months of the cause arising. The tribunal is not bound by the Code of Civil Procedure but follows natural justice, and Section 20 obliges it to apply sustainable development, the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle. Its orders can be appealed in the Supreme Court within 90 days. In 2021 the Supreme Court held that the tribunal may also act on its own (suo motu).

None of the court-made principles is written into the Constitution in so many words. Judges drew them out of Article 21, the right to life and personal liberty, read together with the duty of the State in Article 48A and the duty of citizens in Article 51A(g). In Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1985), the Supreme Court acted on a letter about limestone quarrying in the Doon valley and ordered many quarries closed. In Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991) it stated directly that the right to life includes the right to enjoy pollution-free water and air. public interest litigation made this growth possible: because the Court relaxed the rule on who may approach it, a citizen or group could raise damage to a river or a forest that hurt many people without showing a personal injury.

The first principle was born of disaster. A year after the Bhopal gas leak of December 1984, oleum gas escaped from a Shriram Foods and Fertiliser unit in Delhi in December 1985. In M. C. Mehta v. Union of India (1987), the Oleum gas leak case, the Supreme Court laid down absolute liability: an enterprise engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity owes an absolute duty to the community, and if an accident in that activity harms anyone, it must pay. The older English rule of strict liability from Rylands v. Fletcher (1868) allowed defences such as an act of God, the act of a stranger or the victim's own default; absolute liability allows none. The Court also said compensation should match the size and capacity of the enterprise, so that it deters. Parliament followed with the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991, under which those handling hazardous substances must take insurance and pay immediate relief to victims without anyone having to prove fault.

Two more principles followed in 1996. In Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India, chemical units making H-acid at Bichhri village in Rajasthan had poisoned the soil and wells around them; the Court applied the polluter pays principle, holding that the polluter must bear not only compensation for the victims but also the full cost of repairing the environment. Later that year, in Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum v. Union of India, about tanneries fouling the Palar river in Tamil Nadu, the Court declared polluter pays and the precautionary principle to be part of the law of the land. The precautionary principle has three parts: the State must foresee and prevent environmental harm; where the threat is serious or irreversible, lack of full scientific certainty is no reason to delay; and the burden of proving that an activity is harmless lies on the one who wants to undertake it.

The public trust doctrine entered Indian law in M. C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997). A company linked to Kamal Nath's family had obtained a lease of forest land on the bank of the Beas near Manali for a motel and had altered the river's flow. The Court ruled that rivers, the seashore, forests and the air are not the government's to give away: it keeps them in trust so that everyone can use them, and it may not pass them to a private owner to earn a profit. The lease was cancelled. A related idea is intergenerational equity: the present generation is a trustee of the environment for those not yet born, so today's development must not use up what future generations will need. Together with sustainable development, these ideas let courts weigh industry against ecology rather than pick one side outright.

Two smaller bodies also turn up in Prelims. The Central Zoo Authority, set up in 1992 under a section added to the Wild Life (Protection) Act in 1991, recognises zoos and lays down standards for them. The Animal Welfare Board of India, established in 1962 under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, is a statutory advisory body on animal welfare. Over all of these stands the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, nodal for nearly every law in the chapter; the Forest Rights Act is the clear exception, belonging to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. Seen whole, the chapter has one pattern: the Constitution gives the duty and the power, Parliament wrote sector laws with their own regulators, and the courts built principles that the NGT Act now makes binding.

Exam traps

• The NGT's Schedule I lists seven Acts. The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, the Indian Forest Act, 1927 and the Forest Rights Act, 2006 are not among them; the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991 and the Water Cess Act, 1977 are.
• Under the Biological Diversity Act, foreigners, non-resident Indians and foreign-controlled companies need the NBA's prior approval; Indian citizens and companies only give prior intimation to the State Biodiversity Board; local people, growers, vaids and hakims are exempt.
• The People's Biodiversity Register is prepared by the Biodiversity Management Committee of the local body, not by the NBA or the State Board.
• The NBA is at Chennai; the NGT's principal bench is at New Delhi, with zonal benches at Bhopal, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai.
• Absolute liability (Oleum gas, 1987) allows no defence at all; strict liability (Rylands v. Fletcher, 1868) allows exceptions such as an act of God. Do not treat the two as the same.
• The public trust doctrine came from M. C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997); polluter pays was applied in the Bichhri case (1996); Vellore (1996) made polluter pays and the precautionary principle part of the law of the land. Questions often swap these cases.
• Under the precautionary principle the burden of proof lies on the developer or polluter to show the activity is safe, not on the public to show harm.
• An NGT order is appealed to the Supreme Court within 90 days, not to the High Court; and since 2021 the NGT may act suo motu.

Recap

• Biological Diversity Act, 2002: implements the CBD (India ratified 1994); NBA (Chennai, 2003), State Biodiversity Boards, BMCs in every local body.
• Foreigners need NBA prior approval; Indians give prior intimation to the state board; local people, vaids and hakims exempt.
• Benefit sharing through the National Biodiversity Fund; BMCs keep People's Biodiversity Registers; first heritage site Nallur Tamarind Grove (2007).
• 2023 amendment: AYUSH practitioners and codified knowledge exempt from intimation; IPR approval before grant; offences decriminalised.
• NGT: set up 18 October 2010; principal bench New Delhi, zonal benches Bhopal, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai; seven Acts in Schedule I.
• NGT must apply sustainable development, precaution and polluter pays (Section 20); appeal to the Supreme Court within 90 days; suo motu power upheld in 2021.
• Article 21 cases: RLEK (1985), Subhash Kumar (1991); public interest litigation opened the courts to environmental claims.
• Absolute liability (Oleum gas, 1987); polluter pays (Bichhri, 1996); precaution and polluter pays as law of the land (Vellore, 1996); public trust (Kamal Nath, 1997).
• Central Zoo Authority (1992, Wild Life Act); Animal Welfare Board of India (1962, PCA Act, 1960); MoEFCC is nodal except for the Forest Rights Act.

Practice questions

Sources

• The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (Sections 3, 6, 7, 8, 22, 27, 37 and 41), as amended by the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 — https://www.indiacode.nic.in
• The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 (Sections 3, 4, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20 and 22; Schedule I) — https://www.indiacode.nic.in
• Supreme Court of India: Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1985); M. C. Mehta v. Union of India (Oleum gas leak, 1987); Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991); Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India (1996); Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum v. Union of India (1996); M. C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997); Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai v. Ankita Sinha (2021) — https://main.sci.gov.in
• Constitution of India: Articles 21, 32, 48A and 51A(g) — https://legislative.gov.in/constitution-of-india
• The Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991; the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, Section 38A (Central Zoo Authority); the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, Section 4 (Animal Welfare Board of India) — https://www.indiacode.nic.in
• PRS Legislative Research: summary of the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 (passed in 2023) — https://prsindia.org
• Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and National Biodiversity Authority: annual reports; list of biodiversity heritage sites — https://nbaindia.org