INTRODUCTION

There is a growing acceptance that the concept of good governance includes the participatory
democracy as its crucial component. Participation of the public in decision-making process has a
significant impact on the improvement of quality of the resulting decisions and the credibility of
this process (OHCHR -The Role of the Aarhus Convention in Promoting Good Governance and
Human Rights)1. Environmental issues necessarily imply a global dimension and a
transboundary nature; thus it is not possible to reduce the protection of the environmental human
right to the framework of internal legal systems.. Law and policy for ensuring the environmental
protection, in most countries, basically rely on governments and public authorities.
Environmental issues necessarily imply a global dimension and a transboundary nature; thus it is
not possible to reduce the protection of the environmental human right to the framework of
internal legal systems. For this reason, states are obliged, in fulfilling their obligations, to
abandon the criteria of territorial jurisdiction and to ensure the exercise of this human right
beyond the boundaries of their territory. Therefore, individuals may also require the protection of
the rights proclaimed by this treaty before the Committee in order to consider compliance with
obligations under the Aarhus Convention by contracting parties, regardless of the criteria of the
territorial jurisdiction of states. The UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public
Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, usually known
as the Aarhus Convention, was signed on 25 June 1998 in the Danish city of Aarhus. It entered
into force on 30 October 2001. As of March 2014, it has 47 parties—46 states and the European
Union. All of the ratifying states are in Europe and Central Asia 2. The Aarhus Convention is a
multilateral environmental agreement through which the opportunities for citizens to access
environmental information are increased and transparent and reliable regulation procedure is
secured. It is a way of enhancing the environmental governance network, introducing a reactive
and trustworthy relationship between civil society and governments and adding the novelty of a
mechanism created to empower the value of public participation in the decision-making process
and guarantee access to justice: a "governance-by-disclosure" that leads a shift toward an
environmentally responsible society3. It links environmental rights and human rights,
acknowledges that we owe an obligation to future generations and establishes that sustainable

3
development can be achieved only through the involvement of all stakeholder. It links
government accountability and environmental protection. The Aarhus Convention grants the
public rights regarding access to information, public participation and access to justice, in
governmental decision-making processes on matters concerning the local, national and
transboundary environment. It focuses on interactions between the public and public authorities.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Aarhus Convention is the result of development of International Environmental and Human
Rights law. In 1995 , ECE (Economic Council for Europe) issued guidelines on Access to
Environmental and Public Participation in decision making (Sofia Guidelines) at Ministerial
Conference held in Sofia. The idea of guidelines originated at the second Ministerial Conference
held at Lucene, Switzerland in 1913, where the senior Advisor establishes the Task force on
environmental rights and obligations which in 1994 was given the task of drawing up guidelines
which was later adopted. After Sofia Guidelines, the committee on environmental policy in 17 th
January, 1996 established the Ad hoc working grow up for the preparation of a convention
access to information and public participation in environmental decision- making.

Also a number of conventions wee found helpful in the road to adopt Aarhus Convention as,

Year
198 International convenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1996 deals with the ‘
6 freedom to seek’, receive and impart information.
197 Declaration of the United Nation Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm
2 declaration), as it’s principle 1 links environmental matter to human rights and set out a
fundamental to ‘an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-
being.
198 Declaration of Carlsberg on the protection of the Right of Information and
0 Participation.
198 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
1
198 Council of Europe Recommendation No (81)19 of the committee of ministers to
1 member states on the access to information held by public authorities
 198  World charter of nature.
2  General Assembly Resolution 45/94 of 14 Dec 1990.
 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992.
 Draft Principles On Human Rights And The Environment,1994.

OBJECT

Article 1 of this convention deals with the object which states that, “In order to contribute to the
protection of the right of every person of present and future generations to live in an
environment adequate to his or her health and well-being, each Party shall guarantee the
rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice
in environmental matters in accordance with the provisions of this Convention”. The Aarhus
Convention aims to enhance the environmental protection by granting the public specific
procedural environmental rights: access to information, public participation and access to justice.
These three elements are called three ‘pillars’ of the Convention. Simultaneously, it imposes
corresponding obligations on Parties and public authorities to ensure that the rights are really
granted to the public. It is important to notice that public participation cannot be effective
without access to information, as provided under the first pillar, nor without the possibility of
enforcement enabled through access to justice under the third pillar. In this way all the three
pillars are closely interconnected and only together they can fulfil the complete set of targets of
the Convention that we may describe in such points as increasing engagement of civil society in
the environmental policymaking, increasing its democratic nature and legitimacy, increasing the
transparency and democratic legitimacy of government policies on environmental protection, and
developing a sense of responsibility among citizens by giving them the means to take legal
action to protect their environment.

FEATURES OF CONVENTION

The Aarhus Convention is a rights-based approach: the public, both in the present and in future
generations, have the right to know and to live in a healthy environment. The general provisions
of the Convention — article 3 — set the general principles that guide all the other, more detailed
and specific provisions. They cover aspects important for the implementation of the Convention,
such as establishing a clear framework to implement the Convention, ensuring compatibility
among its elements, providing guidance to the public in taking advantage of the rights it conveys,
promoting environmental education and awareness-building, supporting groups promoting
environmental protection and prohibiting persecuting, harassing or discriminating against those
exercising their rights under the Convention. The general provisions make it clear that the
Convention is a floor, not a ceiling. Parties may introduce measures for broader access to
information, more extensive public participation in decision-making and wider access to justice
in environmental matters than required by the Convention. The Convention also makes it clear
that existing rights and protections that go beyond those of the Convention may be preserved.
Finally, the general provisions call for the promotion of the Aarhus principles in international
decision-making processes and organizations in matters relating to the environment. The Aarhus
Convention stands on three “pillars” — access to information; public participation; and access to
justice — which are provided for under its articles 4 to 9. The three pillars depend on each other
for full implementation of the Convention’s objectives.

1. Pillar I — Access to information

Access to information stands as the first of the pillars. It is fitting that it comes first in the
Convention, since effective public participation in decision-making depends on full, accurate,
up-to-date information. However, it is equally important in its own right, in the sense that the
public may seek access to information for any number of purposes, not just to participate. The
access to information pillar is split in two. The first part concerns the right of the public to seek
information from public authorities and the obligation of public authorities to provide
information in response to a request. This type of access to information is called “passive”, and is
covered by article 4. The second part of the information pillar concerns the right of the public to
receive information and the obligation of authorities to collect and disseminate information of
public interest without the need for a specific request. This is called “active” access to
information, and is covered by article 5. The ‘information pillar’ comprises firstly the obligation
of public authorities to respond to public requests for information (so called ‘passive access to
information’) and secondly the duty to provide environmental information actively, i.e. to
collect, update and disseminate such information from the own initiative of a respective
authority. The public’s right to obtain information on request from public authorities covered by
Art. 4 of the Convention requires the Parties to ensure that any person, without duty to prove or
state an interest or a reason for requesting, has the right to request any environmental information
and get it as soon as possible, at the latest within one month, unless the requested information
can be shown to fall within a finite list of exempt categories. For these cases, the Convention sets
out very clear procedure rules for refusals of providing information. The definition of
‘environmental information’ as set in Art. 2 (3) encompasses a non-exhaustive list of elements of
the environment (whose definition is not established by the Convention), such as air, water, soil
etc.; factors, activities or measures affecting those elements; and human health and safety,
conditions of life, cultural sites and built structures, to the extent that these are or may be
affected by the aforementioned elements, factors, activities or measures. The Implementation
Guide to the Aarhus Convention concludes that the intention of the drafters was to craft a
definition that would be as broad in its scope as possible, so as to strengthen the procedural rights
of members of public within its application.6 Moreover, the Convention enables the Parties to
establish even a broader scope of ‘environmental information’ in their national legislation. The
definition of a ‘public authority’, given in Art. 2 (2) is also very rich in content and covers
government institutions of all levels, all persons performing public administrative functions, and
persons having public responsibilities or functions, or providing public services in relation to the
environment. As regards the first group – the government institutions, it is irrelevant whether
their responsibilities have links to the environment. All governmental authorities of any function
are covered under ‘public authorities. Public authorities may impose a charge for supplying
information provided that the charge does not exceed a ‘reasonable’ amount.8 The active
information duties that the Convention imposes on the Parties in Art. 5 include general
obligations of public authorities to be in possession of up to date environmental information
which is relevant to their functions, and to make information ‘effectively accessible’ to the
public by providing information on the type and scope of information held and the process by
which it can be obtained. It means that Art. 5 primarily sets out the duties of the Government to
collect and disseminate on its own initiative the pieces of information which are relevant to their
functions. Art. 5 does not relate to all environmental information under Art. 4 but only to specific
categories of information. This includes, inter alia, information relevant to public authorities’
functions, information about proposed and existing activities that may significantly affect the
environment, information in times of emergencies, information on the state of the environment,
product information, pollutant release and transfer information, information about laws,
programs, policies, agreements and other documents relating to the environment and information
about how to get information. For example, a water authority would be expected to possess and
update information concerning water resources and not necessarily air pollution emissions data.

Pillar II — Public participation in decision-making

The second pillar of the Aarhus Convention is the public participation pillar. It relies upon the
other two pillars for its effectiveness — the information pillar to ensure that the public can
participate in an informed fashion, and the access to justice pillar to ensure that participation
happens in reality and not just on paper. In Art. 6 – 8 the Convention sets out minimum
requirements for public participation in various categories of environmental decision-
making.The public participation pillar is divided into three parts. The first part concerns the
participation of the public that may be affected by or is otherwise interested in decision-making
on a specific activity, and is covered by article 6. The second part concerns the participation of
the public in the development of plans, program and policies relating to the environment, and is
covered by article 7. Finally, article 8 covers participation of the public in the preparation of
laws, rules and legally binding norms. The term ‘public participation’ is not expressly defined in
the Convention. The preamble and the relevant Articles however indicate what values the public
participation shall fulfil and which forms it can have. The general goal of this pillar is to ensure
providing the public with a mechanism for asserting the right to live in an environment adequate
to health and well-being, together with fulfilling everybody’s duty to protect the environment.
The public participation shall also contribute to transparency in decision-making and strengthen
public support of decisions about the environment. In any type of environmental decision-
making, the public participation builds on a cooperative action of public authorities and members
of public involved, which should ideally result in some kind of a partnership in policymaking.
The essential steps in any public participation must include:

 effective notification of the planned procedure to the public with an adequate information
on the possibility to participate;
 adequate information to the public on the content of the problem to be decided; this
includes also a right for those who are expected to be most affected by the decision (so
 called the public concerned) to inspect information which is relevant to the decision-
making free of charge;
 proper procedures for the public participation, which means an adequate timing
(preferentially at a stage early enough to be able to really influence the final decision) and
defined forms of public commenting (e.g. public hearings or a possibility of sending
written comments);
 appropriate consideration of the outcome of the public participation; this step describes
how the public authorities should treat the comments of the members of the public; this is
crucial, because if the public input is not capable of having a tangible influence on the
actual content of the decision, then the public participation is not effective and is rather
formal;
 prompt public notification of the decision taken, with the text of the decision and the
reasons and considerations on which it is based being made publicly accessible.

Pillar III — Access to justice

The third pillar of the Aarhus Convention is the access to justice pillar, contained in article 9. It
helps to enforce both the information pillar (specifically, article 4 concerning information
requests) and the public participation pillar (specifically, article 6 on public participation in
decisions on specific activities) in domestic legal systems, as well as any other provisions of the
Convention that Parties specify in their domestic law to be enforced in this manner. The access
to justice pillar also provides a mechanism for the public to enforce environmental law directly.
The third pillar of the Convention regulated in Art. 9 requires the Parties to ensure the public the
'access to justice', meaning a legal possibility to enter a review procedure before a court that shall
be ‘fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive’ in three contexts:

 in cases of information requests under Art. 4, that the questioner finds unlawfully refused
or not appropriately handled;
 in cases of specific decisions under Art. 6 which are subject to public participation
requirements, being opposed as illegal, either substantively or procedurally, by a person
of the public having a sufficient interest or suffering a persistent impairment of his or her
right;
 in cases of challenging breaches of environmental law in general.
The first two points refer directly to the preceding Convention pillars and enable their
enforcement. On the other hand, the third point under Art. 9 (3) – the requirement to set up a
review procedure to challenge acts and omissions by public authorities and private persons who
breach laws relating to the environment in general, creates a new level of the access to justice,
going far beyond the other Convention requirements. This provision is really very wide and
enables to take legal action not only against violations of law or failures to take action required
by law of public authorities, but also against private persons outside the government (for
example, enterprises and others who are subject to it), for members of the public 'where they
meet the criteria, if any, laid down in national law'.14 At the same time, the wording of Art. 9 (3)
is unfortunately rather indefinite and not clear enough and since the entering of the Convention
in force, its correct interpretation has had to be searched and developed. The problem is that the
right mentioned is unprecedented in law in general: national laws usually do not equip the
members of the public with the right to open proceedings (e.g. criminal proceedings) directly
against private violators of environmental norms; the public may, as a rule, only notify the
competent authorities (e.g. police). That is also the main reason why Art. 9 (3) is considered as
an especially tough proposition to be put in national practice, although the (not clear enough)
provision is interpreted as allowing Parties, thanks to its wide scope, more flexibility in its
implementation.

Final provisions: administering the Convention

A convention, as an obligation on sovereign entities (i.e., the Parties), requires institutions and
formal mechanisms (for example, a secretariat, committees and other subsidiary bodies) to allow
the Parties to confer and work together on implementation. The Aarhus Convention includes a
number of provisions relating to such institutions and formalities, as do most international
agreements. These provisions are found in articles 10 to 22. Among the more significant issues
covered by the Convention’s final provisions are its coming into force, the Meeting of the
Parties, the secretariat, review of compliance and settlement of disputes. While a ECE
convention, the Aarhus Convention is also open to Member States of the United Nations from
outside the ECE region. Over the years the Parties to the Convention have repeatedly expressed
their support for accession to the Convention by States from outside the region13 and in support
of this, through decision IV/5, the Meeting of the Parties agreed some simple procedural steps
for approving such accessions

CONCLUSION

The significant component of the environmental protection is referring to governance and

competent authorities that have a strong influence toward the realization of the environmental
policies and actions, as well as in achieving outcomes in this field. The good environmental
governance is needed in order to address the most urgent environmental challenges that represent
the significant threat to the humanity and its survival. One of the most important objectives of
the Aarhus Convention refers to protection of the planet and its ecosystems by creating
participatory democratic system. Therefore, the Convention represents the shared concern of the
parties to ensure government accountability and responsiveness in the environmental field. The
transposition of the requirements of the Aarhus Convention represents of a valuable contribution
to the process establishing good environmental governance. By creating a linkage between
human rights and environmental issues, the Convention develops public participation in
environmental governance to the level of a special human right to an adequate environment that
is exercised through three particular rights in environmental matters – access to information, to
participation in decision-making and access to justice. The protection of the right to an adequate
environment, as legal recognition of human need to live in environment that is adequate for
human health and well-being, represent the ground of the Aarhus Convention to strengthen the
democracy and transparency of the public authorities in the field of environmental protection.