Constitutional Mandates and Wildlife Protection: The Expanding Role of Environmental Jurisprudence in India

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_6How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Constitutional Environmentalism; Wildlife Protection; Indian Environmental Jurisprudence

Abstract

This research article discusses how India’s Justice system has impacted the nation’s approach to wildlife protection, from giving rights to statutory frameworks and the courts’ intervention. Based on Constitutional provisions- mainly Article 48A, 51A(g) and 21, the Indian legal system is actively moving towards acknowledging that the wildlife has its own worth, irrespective of the benefits for us. Being a self-proclaimed superior species, we humans have the prime responsibility towards other species. Important Judgments like Subhash Kuamar v. State of Bihar (1991) and Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraj (2014) clearly show the deviation from a human-centric approach to an eco-centric approach. Still, weak follow-through, pushback from agencies, along with scattered authority structures, weaken powerful verdicts, showing courts cannot fix everything when nature’s future is at stake. This paper therefore, contends that meaningful and durable wildlife protection in India depends on a tighter alignment between carefully drafted legislation, principled judicial oversight, and genuinely participatory governance. Only when these elements work together can constitutional commitments to wildlife and the environment be translated into real and enduring ecological justice.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shubham Verma
AU  - Vaishali Arora
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/07
TI  - Constitutional Mandates and Wildlife Protection: The Expanding Role of Environmental Jurisprudence in India
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Conceptualizing Legal Framework and Policies for Domestic Animal and Wildlife Conservation: Issues and Challenges in Hybrid Mode (ICAR 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 60
EP  - 72
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_6
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_6
ID  - Verma2026
ER  -