8-year climate justice battle at LHC ends

"Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale - climate change. If we do not take action, the collapse of our civilisation and much of the natural world is on the horizon," Justice Shahid Karim of the Lahore High Court (LHC) said as he brought to an end one of Pakistan's longest-running pieces of public interest litigation.

The case began as a plea against government inaction on the environment and grew, over eight years, into a sweeping judicial intervention in Punjab's fight against smog and water depletion.

Justice Karim disposed of main petition Haroon Farooq versus Government of the Punjab along-with several other connected petitions after using its judicial review powers to push the government towards practical measures for protecting groundwater, controlling smog, preserving trees, reducing pollution and strengthening environmental governance, holding that climate and environmental litigation require sustained judicial oversight rather than a one-time order.

Justice Karim described the case as the "last judgment in the trilogy" and a "tour de force of climate justice", one in which the court, faced with what it called "bureaucratic inertia" and government "stonewalling," repeatedly stepped in where the executive would not.

However, soon the petition transformed into a melting pot of ideas. Many joined in good faith as well-meaning individuals and organisations and contributed in their own way.

The ruling's most striking claim: every single brick kiln in Punjab has now been converted to cleaner "zig-zag" technology, and not one illegal pyrolysis plant, factories illicitly turning old tyres into fuel, remains operational anywhere in the province, both achieved under direct court orders.

The judgment is unusually candid about its own unusual longevity. Justice Karim wrote that "one order, one judgment, one decision could not serve as a magic wand" for a crisis of this scale, and defended the court's eight-year engagement with the case as necessary because the underlying issues, smog, groundwater collapse, deforestation were "recurrent and malleable in essence," forcing the litigation to "mould itself" continuously rather than end prematurely.

Justice Karim found that the alarming depletion of groundwater, water wastage and worsening environmental conditions required sustained judicial intervention to enforce citizens' fundamental rights and compel government agencies to discharge their legal duties.

In the 264-page judgment, it held that the proceedings had evolved into rights-based litigation seeking climate justice, with the court exercising its constitutional judicial-review powers to address complex and continuing environmental problems that could not be resolved through a single order.

The judgment said WASA reports had initially highlighted alarming groundwater depletion, prompting the court to place water conservation at the centre of the proceedings. It consequently pursued measures including recycling water used for ablution at mosques, underground rainwater storage tanks and recharge wells.