The UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matter celebrates its 10th anniversary today. It was adopted by forty governments and the European Community in Aarhus, Denmark, on the 25th June 1998 at the Fourth Ministerial Conference in the 'Environment for Europe' process.
The Aarhus Convention is unique among multilateral environmental agreements in the extent to which it promotes citizens’ environmental rights. Its core principles – the right to information, the right to participate and the right to seek access to justice – empower ordinary members of the public to hold governments accountable and to play a greater role in promoting more sustainable forms of development.
The Convention put in place legally binding norms which give the public a major new role in decisions impacting the environment at all levels, global, national and local. It opens Governments to inspection and participation by grassroots communities in a way no other legal agreement has done before.
Impressive progress has been made during the ten years since the Convention’s adoption. After a remarkably quick entry into force in October 2001, efforts to lay the foundation for the work under the Convention were made by the Parties and Signatories, with the strong support of civil society organizations, at the first meeting of the Parties, held in Lucca, Italy, in October 2002.
The adoption of the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers at the Kiev Ministerial ‘Environment for Europe’ Conference in May 2003 was another important milestone.
At the second meeting of the Parties, held in Almaty in May 2005, the long-running discussions on how the Convention should address the issue of genetically modified organisms were brought to a successful conclusion with the adoption of an amendment which will expand the possibilities for the public to participate in decision-making in this hotly-debated area.
The meeting also saw the adoption of the Almaty Guidelines on Promoting the Application of the Principles of the Aarhus Convention in International Forums. The Guidelines have already provided the basis for a dialogue between the Convention bodies and other interested international forums on how to involve representatives of civil society in international processes. The meeting further adopted recommendations on electronic information tools which solidified the Parties’ commitment to mobilize Information and Communication Technology – notably the Internet – to promote informed participation in decision-making on the environment.
With 40 ECE member States now Party to the Convention, and the European Community itself also a Party, the standards established by the Convention now prevail throughout much of the region.
Aside from these distinct milestones, the greatest achievement of the Convention, and the real measure of its value, concerns the changes it has brought about on the ground.
The assumption that anything that is not public is secret has been widely replaced by the assumption that anything that is not secret is public. Participatory democracy is increasingly seen as a basic right, whose realization enriches the quality of decision-making and reduces alienation among communities through creating a sense of involvement.
So, there is much to celebrate on this tenth anniversary. However, many challenges remain. Implementation of the provisions of the Convention concerning access to justice, and to some extent public participation, continues to be more problematic than the implementation of those concerning access to information.
What is distinctive about the Aarhus Convention is that it provides a role for the public in identifying whether such problems exist.
While in legal terms the Convention, like any international treaty, is an agreement between sovereign governments, in political terms it has some of the characteristics of a contract between governments and civil society. If a Party is in breach of its obligations, it is generally not another Party that suffers but rather members of the public, and in this context, it makes sense that the views of the public on the degree of success or failure in implementation should be heard.
There is also a widely held view that the benefits of the Convention could and should be enjoyed in more countries. The Convention may serve as an inspiration not only in other regions but also in other subject areas with a parallel interest in transparency, public participation and democratization.
Particular tribute should be paid to the sustained input from non-governmental organizations into the work under the Convention. Civil society is important in all intergovernmental processes but nowhere more so than in a treaty which is all about the relationship between government and civil society.
