the unheard sycamore gap(s) of the world

 

The poignant murder of the famous tree at Sycamore Gap of Northumberland, England (the tree has been referred to as “sycamore gap” throughout this article for ease in reading) had induced sentimental reaction and furore reportedly across the world. Defined by its historicity and photogenic popularity, its felling by two white men on a day of raging storm in 2023, to obfuscate their crime, was revenged on May 8, 2025, when the Newcastle crown court found them guilty of the offence of vandalism. Despite sentencing still pending, the case is a specimen distinguished by its unique contribution to environmental litigation and particularly, acceptable evidentiary standards in such cases. However, the case’s success must be set in the right context which is defined by sycamore gap’s privilege in terms of its situation, popularity and most importantly, singularity.

Without any demeaning prejudice to Sycamore gap, contextualising its killing is essential to reveal an intersectional privilege that was bestowed upon it. Similar to caste- and colonial structures prevalent in the human society, duplication of similar categorisation in the tree world is palpable. the tree was assumably planted in the nineteenth century in a now protected heritage site. The tree was featured in a film titled, ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’, and numerous famous photographs have featured it in impeccable beauty and awe. Its singular situation in a vast meadow further buttresses its identity. Indubitably, this heritage-linked identity made its murder more culturally significant and legally questionable. The crime that the accused have been convicted under is that of vandalism, of the tree and ensuing damage to the adjacent historically-reputed Hadrian’s Wall, both owned by the National Trust.  

Having put the case in its context, it is undeniable that the fame of Sycamore Gap was relevant to attain the result of the accuseds' conviction under the Criminal Damage Act, 1971. The Act criminalises damage to any property “belonging to anyone” intentionally or recklessly (§ 1); thus, the offence is rooted in tort law, that is essentially, private law. Assumably, this is also where the fact of ownership by National Trust has been of consequence, which was entrusted with the protection of the heritage site and that “owned” Sycamore Gap. However, this presents another peculiar and potentially decapacitating factor to criminal liability for environmental damage. Viewed from a higher point, this was essentially an anthropocentric liability dispute, where sycamore gap was merely one privileged tree to have been located in a heritage site with the National Trust as its steward. The cultural and social reprisal to its killing put an impetus to setting in motion the legal process that was consistently followed by all who had developed acquaintance with sycamore gap. Conclusively, apart from the vertical subordination of sycamore gap through the anthropocentric Criminal Damage Act, that treated it as a property rather than an entity in itself (see this in the context of Rights of Nature context), there also exists a horizontal subordination where chances of avenging sycamore gap’s death were significantly higher.

This second argument stems from the palpable differentiation between trees and forests where the fame of certain trees/forests and their Global North situatedness may facilitate their better protection from damage originating from extractive activities. in this paradigm, the white men in the sycamore gap case would be representative of fossil fuel mammoths and coal digging companies, defined by their neocolonial streaks and capital-based privilege, that create and sustain Shadow Lands (Klein, 2024). Here, the killing of forests and trees (plural in number) is legalised by law, and the socio-cultural context is conveniently suppressed. Here, namely the Global South, particularly India, the bogey of economic development almost always takes precedence as evident in its forest laws and majority of the judicial pronouncements that inexplicably seek to balance development and conservation. Here, even if criminal liability for felling trees exists, it is marred by coloniality and again, hierarchisation of trees.

Take the case of Hasdeo Aranya, Chhattisgarh, a densely forested area spread over three districts, two of which are covered by the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, and resided by at least four Adivasi communities. After the identification of 23 coal blocks underneath the forest and their allocation to rogue Adani, the procedure for committing genocide of this forest was set in motion, that includes obtaining forest clearance from the Central Government under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. Thus, here, the killing was orchestrated by public law, because the forest and trees were not “owned” by anybody to claim private law remedy if any. This case is also different because as required under various statutes operating in a case of new developmental project, namely, EPA, FCA and FRA read with PESA, the element of public hearing is crucial to gauge any objections to decimation of trees. While this is a progressive legal principle in environmental law in India, to account for rights of indigenous peoples who act as stewards of the forests, it was blatantly dodged in Hasdeo, where the communities despite their opposition were surprised to find their names in the consenting Gram Sabha resolution. Forgery committed to supress cultural opposition to the killing of trees is another plane on which sycamore gap is privileged, where its reputation was arguably essential in getting the conviction against the two accused. Paradoxically, the socio-cultural importance of Hasdeo is perhaps more consequential. Adivasi communities of Hasdeo rely on forest resources for their livelihood, water and shelter. Forest resources here do not involve killing the trees, but gathering of minor forest produce such as flowers, fruits and leaves such as tendu and mahua. The Hasdeo river is the bloodline of forest and the forest itself forms an indispensable conduit between two statutorily recognised and protected wildlife areas. Most importantly, Adivasi communities consider the forest venerably, respecting and worshiping the trees for their existence.

Despite robust cultural integrality and plurality, the situatedness of the trees of Hasdeo Aranya render them cursed. Even if it is argued that private law has its shortcomings in protecting trees everywhere due to its emphasis on “ownership” of trees, public law in India at least does not account for them either, which behoves a progression from its anthropocentricity. In all fairness, India has a statute that expressly pegs criminal liability for forest decimation. And ironically this is a colonial law, the Indian Forest Act, 1920, that the country has not repealed since its introduction by the English colonisers. However, the statute has its problems, which are not nominal. The statute creates a horizontal hierarchisation among forests where reserved forests are the most reputed (§ 30) and only against which criminal liability exists (§ 33). The other two categories of forests are protected forests (§ 29) and village forests (§ 28). The protection of protected forests depends on rules made by respective state governments that may or may not provide for criminal liability as part of its regulatory powers (§ 32). Apart from this hierarchisation that has colonial streaks at its root, the Act is infamous for targeting Adivasi communities under the provision for criminal liability, due to the fact that reservation of forests does not magically vitiate the interdependent relation these communities may have with the forest. Despite the introduction of FRA to combat jeopardization of Adivasi communities and codification of their customary right to depend on forest produce, the IFA continues to exist for those communities the forest rights of which are not statutorily recognised. And problematically, the recognition of these forest rights under FRA has been abysmal, leading to a legal stagnation in effective protection of forests through empowerment of the socio-culturally peculiar position of forest-dwelling communities.

Rampant criminalisation of forest-dwelling communities, considering their identity, through the IFA also distinguishes them from the accused white men in Sycamore Gap’s case. Sycamore Gap was killed by the accused for the “fun” of it, to gain fame and aiming for impunity by blaming the murder on Storm Agnes. The existence of mala fide intention to kill Sycamore Gap is more replicated in the decimation of forests by Big Corporate for coal, other fossil fuels and other mining activities defined by blatant extractivism and creation of Shadow Lands (Chagnon, 2022; Klein, 2024). And yet, they get away scot-free; nonsensically, owing to the prevalence of neocolonial market fundamentalism, they are in fact aided by the state through its “environmental laws”, especially the forest conservation act, 1980 in India. Yet, the criminalisation is reserved for the Adivasi communities which are viewed with suspicion by the bureaucratic state; companies are awarded the benefit of illogical “expost facto” clearance in fact, that rewards their violation of the already “soft” law of FCA. This is where we stand in India, and potentially in other developing nations.

Despite Sycamore Gap’s unmatched luck that is criticisable when juxtaposed in countless “sycamore gaps” that get killed everyday by state and corporate sanction, one appreciable aspect stands with immense potential in environmental litigation. The jury and judge were showed the footage of the crime, that exhibited absolute relentlessness and sadistic pride of the accused while committing the crime. The inducement of sorrow and vindictiveness that ensued is arguably existent in cases of environmental decimation everywhere. When popular protest against state-sanctioned environmental crimes is actively suppressed such as in India, courtrooms may be the only place where that sorrow and vindictiveness can become consequential. Principles of objectivity and rationality ingrained in law must be rethought in environmental litigation, where the lacuna found in the existence of flawed or unenforced statutes could be accounted for in adjudication, where evidence of decimation and popular resistance, as it happens, brings into perspective the scale of de facto killing of trees. This is key takeaway that challenges the premise of objectivity of law that has so far aided neocolonial adventures of Big Corporate.

 

References 

- Naomi Klein, Doppelganger (Penguin, 2024)

  - Christopher W. Chagnon et al., ‘From extractivism to global extractivism: the evolution of an organizing concept’, 49(4) Journal of Peasant Studies 760-792 (2022)

We are doomed.

 

December 2018, Katowice. That marked the beginning of my realisation that we were on our way to apocalypse. Six years on, after attempts that I would call frenetic, people who feel the urge to do something about it remain unheard, subsumed by the masculine assertion by fossil fuel giants, Big Corporate, and compliant government. CoPs have become a sham, a circus for demagogues and ungrounded talk. Elected representatives remain mired in non-problems, in the face of The Problem of Climate Apocalypse. Amidst this, law could barely have done something. We could not have possibly expected the law to correct our future, it can never do that with the entire world being complacent and in a deep slumber.

Domination of Delhi in air pollution politics has meant that while the Supreme Court will intervene there, albeit miserably failing again, villages and towns in Punjab remain cloaked in equivalently fatal smog, but no-one paying attention. 400 and above is not a measure only recorded in Delhi but in the entire North India. But have the courts thought about that? And it’s not even the work of the courts. Are the governments not seeing their dereliction of duty? Do they not exist in the same cities, towns as the people? Can the Delhi problem really be solved without paying heed to the problem of the northern region? Do you really think Delhi is a secluded island? Then why focus on Delhi alone? Are rural lives disposable? Are rural and semi-urban settings of Punjab non deserving of an equal attention by the Supreme Court, or rather their governments? Do they not need clean air? And remember it’s not the farmers, but overwhelming number of cars and factories powered by Big Oil. Do not deflect the blame on farmers for capitalist, classist infrastructure is to blame.

Those who choose to speak up against domination of Big Corporate are repressed by the state. example- Hasdeo Aranya and FFF. Urban Naxals are what the dissidents are called. A conspiracy of the Left to derail national development and security. The Shadow Lands remain unheard, exploited, pulverised, suppressed, unliveable because of this vilification.

CoP 29 begins with the routine alarm raised by Antonio Guterres, but he represents those who are vilified. He is not heard by anyone. The Big Oil and compliant governments will continue to fuel wars, annihilation of Shadow Lands, accelerating our pace to reach the climate apocalypse, and law will remain there. Law will not help because its elaborate statutes on Big Corporate can never be defeated by namesake, mouldable and minuscule statutes on environment with convoluted logics at the heart.   

 

 

Skewed State Priorities thwarting Climate Action

A deeply-rooted modus operandi of how the world has so far attempted to deal with the climate crisis overbearingly involves a discussion amongst the States as stakeholders. Quite naturally, whilst dealing with a transnational issue, countries emerge as an immediately relevant stakeholders. Assumptively, these countries will be better placed to align their domestic and international commitments to resolve the problem. However, this model has consistently failed, given that climate change has attained tags indicative of an exacerbated form: climate crisis, climate emergency and climate breakdown. And this argument does not merely rest on narratives but on events where State Institutions have averred a pernicious tendency of thwarting progress in pursuance of mitigating the crisis. The past month saw reporting on two events which strengthens the proposition that state machineries may often become a hindrance in achieving key international cooperation for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

First, the Swiss Council of States superseded perhaps one of the constituent cases of progressive rights-based climate litigation, Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland. Tagging the court’s decision on holding the State accountable for threatening impact of climate change-induced heatwaves on vulnerable groups, particularly old women, as “inadmissible and disproportionate judicial activism”, the Parliament disapproved of the ruling. Second, a paper assessed the impact of post-war reconstruction in Gaza on the climate crisis and forecasted carbon emissions of around 60 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent. This is distinctive from the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions that have already been released as a result of the ongoing war. More glaringly, the scales of share in emissions disproportionately inclines towards the Israeli onslaught vis-à-vis Gaza’s retaliation.

At a slight glance, the background of these events distinguishes them significantly. In Switzerland, the Parliament responded to a judicial pronouncement which would have had the effect of asserting State responsibility to mitigate the climate crisis for at least the vulnerable sections of citizenry (such as old-aged people and women, among others). In Gaza, however, perhaps a larger nationalism-based principle has been fuelling the war for the last nine months. In this regard, it will not be shocking to assume that no actor involved in the Gaza war considered aggravation of climate change as a deterring factor.

But there is an undercurrent of subordinating climate crisis in both the events by contestably prioritising other principles and concerns. In the Swiss case, preserving separation of powers and keeping a vigil on judicial activism trumped the need for developing a combination of rights which would significantly make the State responsible for protecting its people from the worsening impacts of the climate crisis. In Gaza, war based on nationalism and “State-preservation” seems to have easily justified all the other repercussions. Hierarchisation of State priorities has unjustifiably always placed climate action at the bottom of the pile. Paradoxically, this emerges as an unsurprising but equally shocking manner of reacting to the climate crisis because while these countries are already reeling under the deadly exhibitions of the climate crisis, there seems to be no awakening from the slumber of ignorance and short-sightedness.

And this points to the larger pattern of State action when it comes to climate change mitigation and adaptation. CoPs to the UNFCCC often fail to create State obligations which at least meet the pace (outdoing is already out of the window) of exacerbating climate change because of sheer reluctance to commit to overhauling the lucrative and deeply entrenched fossil-fuel based system, and assuming the forum as an opportune platform to exchange rhetorical blames. Consistency in this pattern of non-ambitious State effort leads to the conclusion that the manner of not switching our priorities has been skewed and wrong all along. And when there are some actors intervening to correct that course, such as the ECtHR in the Swiss case, our conventional priorities may take unjustifiable precedence over transformation and change.

Sue the State for Heatwaves- A Case for Violation of Right against Adverse Effects of Climate Change

During my time in Delhi for the last one month, I have been taking auto/ electric rickshaws for commuting to metro stations or directly to the destinations if reaching the metro station was an insurmountable task due to traffics (blockades for VIP passage is a common occurrence in the locality I live in). In an entirely black uniform, I am exposed to an extremely hot and burning wind, a manifestation of the deadly heatwave that has grasped the Indo-Gangetic plains for at least the last one month. While people with private vehicles line around my rickshaw at a traffic signal and enjoy the luxury of their ACs, I and the rickshaw driver get the punishment of being exposed to the heatwave and burning exhaust of these vehicles. And the prognosis of this intensifying or remaining the same in June makes me wonder this: if majority of the people can’t afford to get AC vehicles, and if a large section of the citizenry relies on non-AC workplace but perhaps more essential livelihoods (farming, transportation, construction, among others), is it a fait accompli for the economically marginalised? Or do they have a right to sue the government for inapt action in enhancing climate adaptation and mitigation plans?

When the Supreme Court introduced the right against adverse effects of climate change in M K Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, the reasoning fundamentally relied on Article 14, apart from Article 21, of the Constitution. One paragraph (Paragraph no. 26, 2024 INSC 280) specifically elaborated on this aspect by documenting instances of how different communities are impacted by climate change variably based on their economic, social and cultural background. Indubitably, the observation was significant in defining the scope of this newfound right, signifying a progressive acknowledgment of intersectional impact of climate change. The fact that Supreme Court has constitutionalised this right avers that the government has a crucial responsibility to protect the citizens from climate change, with special attention to the intersectional and varying impacts on different communities. Otherwise, the government is culpable of violating the rights under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. On the face of it, the repercussions and responsibilities imposed in the garb of this right are unprecedented and arguably, at this nascent stage since this right has been materialised, the violations vis-à-vis its fulfilments exceed tremendously.

Exploring this hypothesis through the occurrence of heatwaves and state’s track record for ensuring preservation of right to life (specifically, right to health) of every section of the society, one can identify a palpable void of inaction and abandonment. With the offices of primary lawmakers fully air-conditioned, certain offices of the state themselves are reeling under the impact of this inaction with inapt infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, the general public is undoubtedly on its own, with capitalist empowerment sponsoring ACs in some dwellings whilst capitalist retardment exposing the majority of the citizenry to the former’s exhausts exacerbating the already life-snatching heat. This intersectionality has not been compensated by the state through establishment of appropriate climate change adaptation mechanisms.

An analysis of the approach framed for addressing heatwave concerns reveals a lackadaisical approach of the state in actively taking on the responsibility of establishing infrastructure which protects marginalised communities which are unable to afford private adaptation measures, namely ACs. To the state’s credit, NDMA’s ‘Beating the Heat: how India successfully reduced mortality due to heatwaves’ perhaps encapsulates the approach taken by the state in fulfilling their responsibility to protect the citizens. Formulation of national guidelines to enable Heat-wave Action Plans, conducting workshops, research, advisories, community sensitisation, heat-wave warnings- these form the crux of the state’s approach. Evident is a reductionist approach to the issue at hand where at the end of the tunnel, the actual protection of communities from heatwaves through establishment of requisite infrastructure still remains a far-fetched accomplishment. In simple terms, what does one do with the advisories, research, warnings and community sensitisation, when one is not aided by requisite adaptation facility and equipment? Establishment of heat shelters, water cooling capacities, greening of crowded public areas, among other measures, remain an intervention far too absent, even when at least 23 Heat Action Plans (HAPs) have been formulated.

And this where the newly-founded right in M K Ranjitsinh can possibly come into action. With this right, primarily the vulnerable communities, can seek urgent government action to protect them in view of the fact that they are responsible to ensure their survival and well-being. The mere fact that mortalities have reduced does not aver that this right is not being violated; heat stress itself, which retards one in efficiently performing their livelihood or miscellaneous activities, should be construed as a clear violation of one’s right to life under Article 14 and 21. This perhaps can also become a litmus test about the contours of this newly-founded right and the future of climate litigation in India.