New Delhi, Oct. 23 -- Supreme Court judge Justice Surya Kant, who is set to take over as Chief Justice of India next month, on Wednesday called for a reimagined Indo-Sri Lankan partnership as a "collective guardianship of the Indian Ocean commons", where cooperation is measured "not in treaties signed, but in ecosystems restored and communities made resilient."

Delivering a lecture at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Justice Kant said the time had come for the two countries to pioneer a regional model of environmental constitutionalism, recognising that "certain imminent environmental rights and duties transcend borders."

Proposing a framework for sustained ecological cooperation, he suggested the creation of a Join...