NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday held that companies cannot claim to be socially responsible while disregarding the protection of wildlife and fragile ecosystems affected by their operations.

A two-judge bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Atul S Chandurkar while hearing submissions in the long-running case on conservation of critically endangered Great Indian Bustard held that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) cannot be divorced from a company’s environmental responsibility. “CSR funds are not acts of philanthropy but instruments to discharge constitutional and fiduciary duties, particularly where corporate activities threaten endangered species,” the bench said.

The case was filed in 2019 by environmentalist M K Ranjitsinh seeking urgent measures to prevent the extinction of the Great Indian Bustard, whose populations have declined due to habitat loss and collisions with overhead power lines in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Disposing of the writ petitions, the court ruled that survival of the Great Indian Bustard is non-negotiable, adding firms benefiting from natural landscapes must shoulder responsibility for conserving them.