JOIN USThe Supreme Court has called for adopting eco-centric principle in place of human-centric approach in order to do environmental justice and avoid human-wildlife conflict posing serious threat to different endangered species.
A bench of Justices K S Radhkrishnan and C K Prasad held anthropocentrism — the tendency among the humans to consider themselves as central and significant in the universe — responsible for man-animal conflict.
“Environmental justice could be achieved only if we drift away from the principle of anthropocentric to eco-centric.
“Eco-centrism is nature centred where humans are part of nature and non-human has intrinsic value. In other words, human interest do not take automatic precedence and humans have obligations to nonhumans independently of human interest. Eco-centrism is therefore life-centred, nature-centred where nature included both human and non-humans,” the court said.
The bench’s concern was manifest when it directed Chhattisgarh to take a slew of measures to protect the Asian wild buffalo population in Udanti Wildlife Sanctuary. The animal has been declared as state animal by the Chhattisgarh government.
“Human-wildlife conflict is fast becoming a critical threat to the survival of many endangered species, like wild buffalo, elephants, tiger, lion and others. Such conflicts not only affect its population but also has broadened environmental impacts on ecosystem equilibrium and biodiversity conservation,” the court said.