The Bureau of the Meeting of the Parties to the Aarhus Convention has drawn the attention of Aarhus Convention Focal Points and other environmental officials to proposed adoption of guidelines on the development of national legislation on access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters. The initiative will be taken up at the forthcoming twenty-fifth session of the UNEP Governing Council, meeting from 16 to 20 February 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.
At the request of the Bureau, the Convention secretariat has sent to the Focal Points copies of the draft guidelines with a note by the UNEP Executive Director and a draft decision intended to accompany the adoption of the guidelines together with some background information on the preparatory process.
This initiative is very relevant to the common wish of the Aarhus Parties to support countries in other regions in their efforts to implement principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the principles of the Aarhus Convention, as expressed for example through decision II/9, and in the Lucca, Almaty and Riga Declarations.
The Meeting of the Parties to the Aarhus Convention, together with the involved stakeholders, has on various occasions expressed its support for such initiatives. For convenience, we attach a compilation of extracts from some relevant declarations/decisions of the Aarhus Parties.
The UNEP Governing Council will also discuss the forthcoming programme for the development and periodic review of environmental law for the decade beginning 2010 (Montevideo Programme IV), the draft of which contains (among other relevant elements) a section on public participation and access to information (UNEP/GC/25/INF/15, part I, section G).
Further information on UNEP GC-25 may be found at http://www.unep.org/gc/gc25/ .
