Climate Justice and Environmental Constitutionalism

1.1 EVOLUTION-

From M.C Mehta v. Union of India [i](1986) to Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar [1](1991) the development of climate justice and environmental constitutionalism through these landmark judgements have played an incremental role in shaping the discourse on this untouched topic. Theinclusion of right to enjoy pollution-free water and air under the armpit of Right to Life under Article 21 formed the basis of recognition of climate change as a constitutional movement. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, food insecurity, forced displacement, and public health crises disproportionately affect the most vulnerable populations—those who have contributed least to the problem. The responsibility of who suffers and who damages forms the heart of this climate justice debate. The increasing reliance of courts, lawmakers and social groups on the constitution in order to address the issues of environmental degradation and the rise of the term “Environmental Constitutionalism” reinforced the importance of this evolving topic. This blog makes the case that environmental constitutionalism offers a strong legal framework for operationalizing climate justice, especially in the Global South where poverty, inequality, and historical injustice are intertwined with climate vulnerability.

1.2 Problem Statement-

The major problem this Blog focuses on is the impact that climate change causes on future generations. While current constitutional values may be sufficient to address the ongoing issues of climate change, climate change primarily harms future generations and marginalized communities who lack effective representation in today’s legal and political processes. Due to which the decisions taken may disproportionately affect the future.

1.3 CLIMATE JUSTICE BEYOND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION-

One may confuse climate justice as protection of the environment. But at its core it addresses broader concerns relating to equity, responsibility, and moral accountability. Traditional environmental law often focused on pollution control and conservation, largely divorced from questions of social justice. Climate justice challenges this separation. When we look at the dimensions of climate justice it includes-

1.3.1 DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE-

Damage posed by harsh climate is unevenly distributed, often impacting those having less role in creating it. This is owing to the wide gap between rich and poor. Developing countries, coastal populations, and marginalized communities experience disproportionate harm despite contributing minimally to greenhouse gas emissions.

1.3.2 INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE-

Intergenerational justice recognizes that today’s climate decisions shape the lives of people who cannot yet speak for themselves. When governments delay action or priorities short-term economic gains, they effectively pass environmental risks—floods, heatwaves, resource scarcity—onto future generations. Although future persons cannot vote or approach courts, their right to a livable environment is increasingly understood as implicit in the very idea of justice.

1.3.3 PROCEDURAL JUSTICE-

Procedural justice emphasizes that climate decisions must be made through fair, transparent, and inclusive processes. Communities most affected by climate change—indigenous peoples, coastal populations, farmers, and the urban poor—are often excluded from decision-making, despite bearing the greatest consequences.

1.3.4 CORRECTIVE JUSTICE-

When we look at the corrective part of the problem the focus shifts to the states or corporations that have been substantially benefitted from carbon intensive development and obligations, they owe to those people affected disproportionately. These obligations may include mitigation, adaptation finance, and reparative action to those harmed by climate change.

1.4 CLIMATE CHANGE AS A QUESTION OF POWER AND INEQUALITY

While climate change in India is often seen as neutral, requiring collective action, the harms posed by climate change are generally distributed along existing lines of inequality—economic, geographic, and political. At the international level. Historicallyindustrialized nations remain responsible for the majority of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, while developing countries bear the brunt of climate impacts (IPCC, 2023). At the domestic level, climate burdens fall disproportionately on indigenous communities, coastal populations, informal workers, and the urban poor—groups with limited political influence. Climate justice therefore reframes climate change as an issue of power, responsibility, and exclusion, rather than mere environmental degradation. It demands that law confront not only emissions and adaptation, but also the structural injustices embedded in climate governance itself.

1.5 INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE-

One of the most radical challenges posed by climate change to constitutionalism is that it is temporal. Democracies are inherently present oriented owing to the limited time period of the elected government, resolving live disputes and rights are typically framed for existing persons. Intergenerational justice asks whether the future generations who are not even born yet, do not have a voting right have legal interests. When the party in power grants permission for mining projects or delays climate action, they bind future generations with the inevitable risk it poses without consent. This leaves us with an important question: can a legal system committed to equality and dignity justify sacrificing future lives for present convenience? In response, courts in various jurisdictions have started to acknowledge that safeguarding the environment now is inextricably linked to safeguarding rights in the future. The Supreme Court stated unequivocally inFuture Generations v. Colombia (2018) that environmental degradation infringes upon the rights of future generations. In a similar vein, the State is increasingly framed in climate litigation as a trustee of natural resources, with a duty to maintain ecological stability for future generations. Thus, intergenerational justice broadens the scope of constitutional imagination, requiring the law to act as a guardian of future generations as well as present citizens.

1.6 WHO DECIDES THE FUTURE?

Procedural justice solves the problem of voice as to who gets to decide the roadmap of the climate action or future. The decision making in the current scenario is often dominated by corporate interests, techno-agencies and elites. Communities facing displacement from rising seas, farmers confronting erratic rainfall, and indigenous groups defending ancestral lands are frequently consulted only symbolically—if at all. This exclusion is not accidental; it reflects structural inequalities in access to information, legal remedies, and political influence.

Procedural justice insists that fair outcomes are impossible without fair processes. Transparency, public participation, access to environmental information, and effective judicial remedies are not procedural formalities; they are constitutional necessities

1.7JURISPRUDENTIAL PERSPECTIVES-

From a jurisprudential perspective, climate justice and environmental constitutionalism challenge the conventional limits of time, accountability, and moral authority in law, constituting a fundamental reorientation of legal thought. Environmental protection was first limited by classical legal positivism, which treated ecological harm as a policy issue rather than a legal wrong due to its insistence on validity derived only from enacted norms. However, the constitutionalizing of environmental rights turns moral obligations into legally enforceable obligations, allowing courts to hold the government responsible for its inaction on climate change within a positivist framework. By arguing that moral principles found in reason and the natural order must be followed by law, natural law theory provides a deeper normative justification. As a result, environmental degradation that jeopardizes life and survival calls into question the legitimacy of law itself.

The idea of intergenerational equity, which presents current generations as trustees rather than absolute owners of natural resources, is one way that climate justice resonates strongly with this tradition. When climate harms are long-term, irreversible, and unequally distributed, utilitarian jurisprudence—which dominates climate policymaking through cost-benefit analysis and efficiency-driven governance—becomes inadequate. Environmental constitutionalism ensures that human dignity and ecological preservation are not compromised for temporary overall gains by imposing rights-based restrictions on utilitarian reasoning. In response, constitutional climate jurisprudence in domestic courts emerges as a counter-hegemonic tool, redistributing power through judicial review and participatory rights. Collectively, these jurisprudential perspectives demonstrate that climate justice necessitates a shift from anthropocentric, present-oriented legality toward a constitutional order grounded in stewardship, accountability, and moral responsibility across generations.

1.8 SOLUTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS-

The democratic deficit of climate governance—where future generations and especially the marginalized are left unrepresented—can never be made good through such policies as are easily reversible and subject to political whim. Environmental constitutionalism fills this gap by ensuring ecological protection within the highest level of legal authority, where the constitutional sensitivity of the community is extended beyond the current citizenry to future generations. The doctrine enables the judiciary to hold the government delinquent for lack of action against climate change, where politics cannot deliver the same. More notably, the constitutional mandate will safeguard against the immediacy of economic and electoral cycles, making climate justice more than a moral desire, a constitutional mandate that must be lived.

1.9 CONCLUSIONS-

All in All, it can be concluded that climate justice asks questions which the law was never designed to answer How far into the future should justice extend? Who speaks for the voiceless? Can democracy survive ecological collapse? In the era where climate change is affecting the future it can be said that the legitimacy of constitutional law will increasingly be measured by its ability to protect not only those who live today, but those who will inherit the world tomorrow.

[1]Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, (1991) 1 SCC 598

[i]M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1987) 1 SCC 395