Aarhus Convention Process
FULL NAME: The
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making,
and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters
ISSUES: Public right to
know, right to participate in environmental decision-making, right to justice in
environmental matters. It links environment right and human rights.
GOALS: Enhancing government accountability, transparency, and responsiveness.
Assisting civil society participation & helping to create participatory
democracy for sustainable development in Europe.
PARTICIPATING STAKEHOLDERS: UN
ECE ( forum of 55 countries of North America, western, central and eastern
Europe, and Central Asia), bodies involved in ‘Environment for Europe’
process (framework bringing together environment ministers, institutions and
organisations, including citizens groups involved in environmental protection)
working one of the main, other relevant international organisations,
environmental NGOs, other NGOs
TIME FRAME:
Full preparatory process culminating in adoption at the Fourth Ministerial
Conference “Environment for Europe” in Aarhus, Denmark, 25th June
1998, ongoing time frame to implement.
MSP CONTACT DETAILS; PUBLICATIONS; URL: Official process UN ECE; www.unece.org
“The
Aarhus Convention is a new kind of environmental agreement. It links
environmental right and human rights. It acknowledges that we owe an obligation
to future generations. It establishes that sustainable development can be
achieved only through the involvement of all stakeholders. It links government
accountability and environmental protection. It focuses on the interactions
between the public and public authorities in a democratic context and it is
forging a new process for public participation in the negotiation and
implementation of international agreements” (UN ECE 2000).
Classification:
Type: Policy-making.
Implementation is now happening at the national level.
Level: Although
legalities will only apply within the UN ECE region, it has global implications
and potentially could serve as a framework for strengthening citizens’
environmental rights. It has been described by Kofi Annan, Secretary General of
the UN as the “ most impressive elaboration of Principle 10 of the Rio
Declaration, which stresses the need for citizens’ participation in
environmental issues and for access to information on the environment held by
public authorities.”
Procedural Aspects:
Designing the MSP
It evolved partly
as a result of it being one of first major programmes to significantly involve
NGOs at that stage. Done by UNECE – 3 staff. NGOs provided process advice,
too.
The Governmental
body, the Committee on Environmental Policy, established a Working Group for the
preparation of the Convention (January 1996) and also formed a "Friends of
the Secretariat” group to assist the process, based upon the Sofia Guidelines
(see below).
Identifying the issues to be addressed in an MSP
Issues were
concerned with the development of the Aarhus Convention, an idea that emerged
from the ‘Environment for Europe’ process (which already included the
public). The Convention has provoked interest when compared to other environment
conventions because it focuses on the processes by which environmental decisions
are made. The emphasis on process rather than on outcome provides an innovative
model of multi-lateral policy making. Specific issues flagged up as requiring
further attention under the auspices of the Convention are: genetically modified
organisms (GMOs); development of pollution registers; new forms of information,
including electronic, and compliance issues.
Identifying relevant stakeholders
Questions remain
over whether there was any real attempt to identify relevant stakeholders. NGOs
were invited to participate and went on to play a central – and unprecedented
role in negotiations drafting the Convention itself. This raises questions about
role of NGOs as opposed to the general public as opposed to broader voluntary
sector. But the Convention is definitely an MSP as some people were invited to
participate e.g. major environmental NGOs, and law specialists.
The UNECE process
was well established – with a history of NGO involvement, eg parallel forums
at Sophia and Lucerne meetings and record of involving NGOs from Eastern Europe
and NIS. There was a good base for the Aarhus process. Timing was interesting,
too, as UNECE were involving Eastern Europeans at a time when people were
talking about engaging civil society. One of the problems was that it was
clearly a Ministerial ‘Environment for Europe’ conference – so there was a
big emphasis on environment groups, less on social or economic development side,
yet Aarhus covers these broader interests.
Identifying MSP participants
The Convention
process differed from other official processes as NGOs assumed the practical
status of full and equal partners. An expert group of NGOs were involved &
then a major strategy planning meeting attended by 100 NGOs, but dominated by a
handful of Western NGOs with a very clear agenda. They dominated but could
justify this by saying that the smaller organisations lacked the capacity. It is
also questionable as to how how far the process went beyond governments and
NGOs. It is unclear what discussions did UNECE have with business? There was
academic involvement; the lawyers/academics were mostly on the side of the NGOs.
Setting the goals of an MSP
Aarhus Convention
involves a long-term goal. The whole Environment for Europe process aims to
strengthen environmental institutions, legislation etc. Aarhus was just the
development of a convention. There is a question over how much consensus
building actually took place although there was plenty of dialogue. The question
now is how much implementation there will be. The Aarhus Convention is not yet
ratified by enough countries for it to come into force law (39 countries and the
European Community have signed it). The original goal was for the Convention to
come into force by the end of 2000.
The elite of the
NGOs did have opportunities to check back with their constituencies, consult
electronically via list servers etc.
Setting the agenda
There was a strong
preparatory process, far stronger than anything in Europe up until that time
which in its way was groundbreaking. Also notable was the fact that during the
Ministerial Conference, the NGOs had an afternoon where they set the agenda,
booked the speakers etc. It was an important symbolic moment - ministers sitting
down and talking on an NGO agenda.
Setting the time-table
Timetable defined
by setting the Aarhus meeting, the convention was to be discussed there so all
the preparatory stuff had to be completed by then. Two years of negotiations
with inputs from countries and NGOs throughout the UN ECE region.
Preparatory process
The preparatory
process included a large strategy meeting and some newsletters. It was mostly
small group work which, considering it was a fairly arcane area of policy
making, is not surprising. The convention is now completed. The communication
was conducted mostly in small groups and people involved in these.
Communication process
Small group
discussions were facilitated.
Power gaps: It was
a Government process with NGO involvement. So not a truly diverse MSP but still
highly relevant in terms of NGO participation.
Power gaps did
exist but because the process was about the politics of participation, the
process would have benefited from more discussion about the process itself than
there was. The situation was dominated by a small group of NGOs working within a
tight time frame. Although there was time for reflection in between meetings,
the process was all heading towards one particular point in time.
Decision-making process: procedures of agreement
Implementation process
As a policymaking
process, implementation is now happening at a national level, with some
monitoring and feedback to the international level – e.g. Dubrovnik Review
conference (July 2000) in which ministers and NGOs took part. The UK Government
has held a workshop on national and local implementation. NGOs are expected to
play a major role in implementation processes.
Closing the MSP
The process won’t
conclude for a long while yet. For example, the UK has only just (November 2000)
given Royal Assent to its Freedom of Information Act which “directly supports
sustainable development by providing enhanced access to information held by
public authorities about their responsibilities and activities. This will be
used to produce a culture of greater openness so that decisions taken are more
transparent and, as a consequence, public authorities are more accountable for
their actions.” (DETR 2001). This is an ongoing issue for the UK.
Closing the
process: When it does close there will be a need for ongoing monitoring. Given
the crisis in implementation in so many conventions, there is a lot of NGO
scepticism over how much difference this can really make. [NGO comment: It will
probably, ultimately, need to be challenged in the courts. Hardly an example of
good MSP practice!]
Structural Aspects:
Structures / institutions of the MSP
Secretariat – the
UNECE is theoretically the facilitating body. The European Eco Forum (a
coalition of environmental NGOs from across the UNECE region) co-ordinated the
NGO response.
Facilitation
It was a government
process with NGOs there to some extent on sufferance, but recognising this was
their chance. The whole process changed massively – and is still going on -
but the main body of work happened before the Aarhus conference.
Documentation
There were huge
amounts of documentation. Country reports co-ordinated by the REC (Regional
Environment Center for Central and Eastern Europe), small work groups reports,
etc. An Implementation Guide was published by the UN in 2000.
Relating to not-participating stakeholders
Many stakeholders
still don’t know about it, especially if you define stakeholders as anyone who
is going to be affected by it, for example, any major developer putting in a
planning application will, once the Convention is in force, have to provide a
lot more information to the public
in a way that didn’t necessarily hasn’t happened before.
Post-Aarhus,
European environmental citizens’ organisations are calling for a Pan-European
campaign for transparency and participation to ensure that the Aarhus Convention
and the UN ECE Guidelines on Access to Environmental Information and Public
Participation in Environmental Decision-making, endorsed in Sofia (October 1995)
by European Environment Ministers, are fully implemented.
[NGO comment: The
process would have benefited from more private sector involvement. But one
reason that this process didn’t get wrecked was that the private sector
didn’t really pay it much attention.]
Relating to the general public
There is a lot of
information available as the Internet was widely used by stakeholders. However,
very little information is of relevance to the general public although the
follow up conference in 1999 tried to do that. It is now an information exercise
and thus up to national governments.
[For example, the
UK DETR position is that as an agency they do not engage in specific MSPs,
instead it undertakes very general public consultation exercises in response to
new proposals. (It was suggested that the Environment Agency, working at a lower
level might do more innovative work).]
In its latest
Annual Report reviewing progress towards sustainable development, the UK
Government refers to the Aarhus Convention as “strengthening the existing
public access regime for environmental information and making it more liberal
and more responsive.” The Report goes on to state that the Government “is
committed to improving public access to environmental information….New
Regulations to bring the access regime up to this more demanding standard will
be laid in most parts of the UK in 2001, well ahead of European Community
legislation (DETR 2001).
Linkage into official decision-making process
The MSP was linked
to the official decision-making process of developing a UN ECE Regional
Convention.
Funding
NGOs received
funding from national governments (not all).
[ information gathered as of 16 February 2001 ]