This article reviews 'Human Rights in Natural Resource Development', published by the Oxford University Press in 2003. The first part of this anthology gives the background and emerging international law of public participation and its underlying concepts and theoretical issues. The authors introduce the existing principles and treaties in international law leading up to the 1998 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. They credit the Aarhus Convention with creating "more rights in relation to mining, energy and resources, and other forms of economic development than all previous international law put together." Later chapters give an in-depth analysis of the Aarhus Convention compared to the European Union (EU) approach to public participation, examine public participation from the perspective of biodiversity-related conventions and evaluate participation in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union. A detailed outline of the related publication, 'The Law of Public Participation in Mining and Resources Development', may be found at http://www.iied.org/mmsd/mmsd_pdfs/021a_pring.pdf.
