Gagan, LLB (Hons), National Law School of India University
Introduction
Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is a mechanism developed to ensure that both the Government and the Private enterprise come together to pool their strength to execute a project. The Government reduces the risk for the private players whereas the private players bring with them expertise, capital, skills, and technical know-how. However, in PPP’s concerning utilization of natural resources like air, water, forest, and other precious aspects, there is a need for the government to be extra cautious while handling projects for private entities. As the environment is a positive externality, there is a need for the government to ensure the sustainability of the ecosystem not just for the present generation but also for the future generation. Against this backdrop, the doctrine of Public Trust was developed. Though the doctrine could be traced to the Justinian times, as a jurisprudential aspect, it was in the case of Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois that the Supreme court of the USA came up with the detailed doctrine of Public Trust.
This article explains the origin of the doctrine of public trust and then charts the interplay between the public trust doctrine and the public-private partnership. The article examines the obligation of the state in a contract with third parties (PPP) due to the increasing scope of the doctrine of public trust that it is vested with. The article also explains how courts have weighed public purposes against each other in deciding the cases pertaining to breach of the public trust in the use of natural resources.
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