Definitions of the Aarhus Convention v the Proposal for a New Latin America and the Caribbean Instrument – Mapping the Differences in the Material Scope of Procedural Environmental Rights in International Law

Abstract

ABSTRACT The negotiations for the adoption of an international instrument to implement Principle X of the Rio Declaration in Latin America and the Caribbean are currently taking place and expected to finish in 2017. Notwithstanding the premature state of the new instrument, the present study takes an exploratory approach to compare the material scope of the rights to access information, participate in decision-making and access justice under the current Draft and the Aarhus Convention, as the main international reference, by analysing the definitions of key terms such as ‘public authorities’, ‘environmental information’ and ‘public concerned’ in both texts. KEYWORDS Aarhus Convention; LAC Regional Instrument; Private entities; Procedural environmental rights; Public participation; Rio Declaration. INTRODUCTION In June 2012, at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, several Latin-American governments put forward a proposal which led to the adoption of the ‘Declaration on the application of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development’ in Latin American and the Caribbean (‘The Declaration’). As of April 2017, this agreement has been signed by twenty three States in the region and has given place to the negotiating process for an international instrument to ensure the application of the rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters, as envisioned in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration (the ‘Regional Instrument’). Whilst the precise ‘nature’ of the Regional Instrument is still to be defined, since the Parties have left to the end of the process the discussion on whether or not it will be legally binding, and a comparison between the working draft and the Aarhus Convention may thus be premature, the definitions contained in the current working text on terms like ‘environmental information’, ‘competent authority’ and ‘directly affected public’ provide a glimpse into what the material scope of the new instrument will look like and how it would compare to Aarhus’.