Economic Development and Environmental Justice: Cruel Conundrum or Symbiotic Relationship? (We Can Have Plan B, but No Planet B!)

Abstract

An American political philosopher and Harvard University professor, Michael Sandel, famously remarked that “Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the rightway to value things.”1 In today’s globalized economiccentric world, humans have forgotten the real value of the environment and wildlife to our life. Environmental destruction and wildlife crimes are today’s “tragedy of the commons,” and our apathy towards it would lead us only to self-destruction. This approach can be termed as a signature in the race to human destruction. The human tragedy is not merely that environmental destruction and wildlife crimes are a de trop reality of today, but also that we ourselves do not know that environmental destruction and wildlife crimes are something that happens to humankind in the first place. The impact of environmental destruction is no longer a subject matter of research hypotheses; rather, such hypotheses attempt to measure its magnitude. It was the 2016 headline reading “Development More Important Than Tigers, Supreme Court Says”2 that raised eyebrows and concerned many for the simple reason that even the “last resort” to get justice (read environmental justice here) is agreeing with the government’s argument of development over the environment. The successive governments, both at the Centre and the states, have always argued that India is a developing nation with somewhat 22 percent of its population still under the garb of poverty,3 and in order to bring them out of poverty, the state needs to create basic infrastructure, generate employment, promote industrialization, etc., and all these development activities, unfortunately, will have some negative impacts on the environment and wildlife. It is a non-debateable obligation on the part of the government to eradicate poverty, but can environmental destruction be a