Godavarman Case: Environmental Management / studies

Godavarman Thirumulpad is one man who will live forever in the hearts of conservationists. His efforts to stop forest destruction led to a landmark legal intervention, which has greatly contributed to conservation of forests,
On seeing the illegal felling of timber in the Nilgiri hills, Godavarman sought legal intervention which led to Supreme court defining a forest in 1996 in the TN Godavarman Thirumulpad vs Union of India case. The Supreme Court said that forests would be defined by their “dictionary meaning”, and also assumed responsibility for implementing the Forest Conservation Act with this new definition.

All non-forest activity were suspended to prevent further deforestation and the provisions of the Forest Conservation Act were applied to all forests across India, irrespective of their classification or nature of ownership.

However, despite having sound legal provisions and mechanisms devised for safeguarding the environment, preservation of ecosystems in India have still been a difficult task.

And the reasons for that include:

• Rapid increase in population puts pressure on forests resources. To meet the demands of rapidly growing population, agricultural lands and settlements are created by clearing forest areas. Whenever law enforcers try to get rid of encroachers, human rights groups come out in protest, which many a times snowballs into a political controversy and prevents the law enforcers from performing their duties.
• Conversion of forests to agricultural land to feed growing needs of people. Millions of people work as shifting cultivators whose job is to burn and clear forests so that it can be used for cultivation.
• In many cases, major development projects (which are probably the need of the hour considering India’s economic growth) cannot be stopped due to its impact on the environment. In some cases, projects like building dam reservoirs also require chunk of forest land to be cleared.
• Rapid Industrialization helps generate jobs, which is an indicator of the strength of the economy. So some projects are given the go ahead despite its negative impact on environment and forest ecological balance. There are corporates who feel that the growing intervention of conservationists is becoming an impediment to development.

References / Useful Links

• The architect of an omnibus forest-protection case
• Case Comment on T N Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India
• India’s Forests and the Judiciary-The Godavarman Story: https://ideas.repec.org/p/ess/wpaper/id3616.html
• Short history of India’s two-decade struggle to define what a forest is: https://scroll.in/article/726461/a-short-history-of-indias-two-decade-struggle-to-define-what-a-forest-actually-is

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