A Chronicle of Law Implementation in Environmental Conflicts: The Case of Kaziranga National Park in Assam (North-East India)

This text is based on an analysis of conflicts concerning Kaziranga National Park in Assam. Famous for the one-horned rhinoceros, this Park has become a political arena where tension has been mounting since its 2007 inclusion in a project aimed at protecting tigers. The physical injury and damage caused by wildlife to people and their property (land, animals, houses), the eviction of populations from within the Park’s perimeter, and poaching have led to conflicts that combine ecological, social, political, cultural and symbolic features, and which are being brought more and more often before the law courts. The aim of this paper is to show how these features are utilized by the different protagonists and how, since 2006, new decision-making bodies with extensive powers, environmental legislation, and nature-protection or population-defense organizations have contributed to defining the forms these conflicts have taken. Through the lens of environmental law in the making, it highlights some of the workings of India’s nature protection policy. The Kaziranga example provides an overview of the problems key measures or laws have created in the field of environmental protection, whether it is a question of them being applied too rigidly—as is the case of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972—, of them being bent—this is the case of Public Interest Litigations the original purpose of which has completely changed—, or of them not being applied at all—which is the case of the Forest Rights Act 2006 in Assam.