(Posted 12th March 2024)
By Nirmal Jivan Shah via LinkedIn
In a first of its kind in Seychelles, an environmental law decision by the highest court in Seychelles has found that the state has a constitutional responsibility to clean up pollution of public places like rivers and beaches and that it might be liable for damages in some cases.
The decision, likely to be hugely influential, was delivered by the court of appeal in response to a claim by private applicants that the state had not acted to deal with the serious E.coli pollution of a river. While the state argued that it was not constitutionally obliged to act in such a case, the court of appeal has declared that it does indeed under the Constitution of Seychelles have such an obligation.
The ongoing case was originally brought by a company that owns land at Fairview estate in the polluted area and by a director of the company. They are suing the minister of environment, energy and climate change as well as the minister of health, along with the attorney general.
They claim that a river next to their property is badly polluted and the source is strongly suspected to be a large-scale, privately owned, livestock farm. They say such an activity should not be happening in a residential area. They informed the Ministries of environment, energy and climate change as well as of health about the illegal dumping of animal waste into the river that took place at night, but they say nothing was done about it.
Their litigation is based on a contention that the government has failed to carry out any investigation to establish the source of the contamination, and has also failed to clean up the pollution.
damages.
What’s the problem here? Lazy civil servants, corruption or just plain “don’t give a damn”? We need more of these kinds of cases to get much-needed action.
Details of the full judgement are found via https://seylii.org/akn/sc/judgment/scca/2023/57/eng@2023-12-18
