Justice Surya Kant (ANI)
NEW DELHI: Justice Surya Kant, the next CJI, on Wednesday said a vigorous collaborative effort must be made to protect the fragile yet crucial ecology of Palk Strait that geographically divide India and Sri Lanka and argued that judiciaries of the two countries have given rulings that has sensitized the executive towards this goal.Speaking on the “Indo-Sri Lanka Policy Dialogue: Environmental Sustainability and Regional Cooperation” at Colombo, Justice Kant said, “Judicial pronouncements influence Executive behaviour, compel environmental reporting, and often drive policy reform. The potential for structured judicial dialogue could formalise this exchange and strengthen the normative coherence of environmental law between the two jurisdictions.”He said the time is ripe for the two judiciaries to champion a model of regional environmental constitutionalism – recognizing that certain imminent environmental rights and duties transcend borders.“Environmental cooperation between India and Sri Lanka is not a matter of charity or diplomacy – it is a matter of survival. The Bay of Bengal does not divide us; it binds us through a shared ecological fate,” he said. Referring to routine confrontation between Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen, Justice Kant said it epitomises a deeper ecological tragedy – competition for an exhausted resource base. “The impact of climate change and, consequently, rising sea levels threatens coastal zones in both Tamil Nadu and Northern Sri Lanka,” he said.Recounting the impact of the 2004 tsunami and recurring cyclones, he said both countries have experienced how environmental disasters transcend political borders. However, there is a lack of an integrated transboundary environmental governance mechanism, which may be a result of multiple factors, including inconsistent data collection, considering that environmental impact assessments rarely take cross-border effects into account, he said.India and Sri Lanka have, for centuries, been closely connected not merely by culture and trade, but by the ecology of the Indian Ocean itself, he said, adding that as environmental degradation accelerates, our shared geography imposes a collective responsibility.“The Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar are biodiversity hotspots, home to coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and endangered species. Yet these regions are under severe stress. Overfishing, destructive trawling practices, and unregulated coastal construction have caused ecosystem collapse in parts of this marine environment,” Justice Kant said.