A Consultative Meeting of Government Experts on the Draft Guidelines for the Development of National Legislation on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters was held at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi from 20 to 21 June 2008. The meeting was attended by representatives of 40 countries, mainly from developing countries, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. The initiative to draft the Guidelines was taken to draw attention to the importance of these fundamental rights in environmental matters, expressed in the 1992 Rio Declaration’s Principle 10. The purpose of the Guidelines is primarily to provide guidance to developing countries and to countries with economies in transition when developing legislation and regulations on issues covered by the Guidelines. They are to be regarded as minimum guidelines, on which national legislation could be based, and which would need to be tailored according to specific national circumstances.General comments were followed by discussions article per article, until a consensus was reached among the participants on the content and wording of articles. In general, there was no critical issue that could result to an impasse in the discussions. Some key issues that were discussed during the review of the draft are as follows:- The definition of the notions of “public” and “public concerned”. It was agreed to refer to the definition provided by the Aarhus Convention:(i) “The public” may be defined as one or more natural or legal persons, and, in accordance with national legislation or practice, their associations, organizations or groups.(ii) “The public concerned” may be defined as the public affected or likely to be affected by, or having an interest in, the environmental decision-making; for the purposes of this definition, non-governmental organizations promoting environmental protection and meeting any requirements under national law should be deemed to have an interest.- On the principle of access to information, it was agreed not to limit the scope and the nature of environmental information that can be provided to the public. Any country may define the scope and the nature of the information, according to its national laws and regulations, and the public interest.- On the principle of public participation, the participants were concerned about the appropriate level and timing of involvement of the public in a decision making process.- Access to information and public participation are linked in the sense that the participation can not be appropriate if the public does not have access to relevant information.- Both access to information and public participation are key factors to access to justice; as well as the human and logistic capacities of the competent institutions.- Access to justice may not be ensured if (i) the public is not informed on its rights and procedures to access to courts; (ii) the procedures are financially p
