Convention Compliance Committee Research Articles

Are climate activists protected by the Aarhus Convention? A note on Article 3(8) Aarhus Convention and the new Rapid Response Mechanism for environmental defenders

AbstractThe parties to the Aarhus Convention recently established a new Rapid Response Mechanism for environmental defenders. This article analyses this mechanism and its guarantees for environmental defenders, with a specific focus on the protection of diverse forms of climate activism. The Convention's Compliance Committee has taken a broad approach towards the definition of ‘environmental defenders’ protected by Article 3(8) of the Convention. This definition includes persons who engage in demonstrations or rallies connected to environmental issues, even if there is no immediate link to the rights provided by the Aarhus Convention. In some cases, direct actions and acts of civil disobedience may fall under Article 3(8) of the Convention. Where environmental defenders suffer harmful acts such as penalization, harassment or persecution either by State authorities or private parties, the State concerned must produce evidence to show that these harmful acts were not a response to the civic engagement of the environmental defenders concerned. If environmental defenders are victims of harmful acts in the sense of Article 3(8) of the Aarhus Convention, they may address the Special Rapporteur who can swiftly issue protection measures. This could be especially relevant for detained persons, persons under police supervision or activists who undergo systematic harassment by the police or private security forces. In these cases, the Special Rapporteur may intervene and use their unique position on the international plane to ensure that environmental defenders do not suffer due to their engagement for the environment.

The right to environmental information in international legal documents

The paper deals with the issue of regulation of the right of natural and legal persons to environmental information, in relevant international legal documents. There is a survey of certain international conventions which envisage this right in their field of regulation. The right to access the information is in details regulated in the Aarhus Convention, which comprises significant part of this paper. This kind of regulation of the right to environmental information has performed a significant influence on states and international organizations, which created their domestic and international rules, using the solutions from this Convention. The European Union has enacted a significant number of directives on the right of a public to receive environmental information. The special emphasis will be on the work of the Aarhus Convention's Compliance Committee which has a significant role in supervising and deciding about the compliance with the application of the Convention in its member states.

Price and Participation: The UK before the Aarhus Convention's Compliance Committee

Keywords Aarhus Convention, compliance committee, public participation, access to justice, legal costs

Price and Participation: The UK Before the Aarhus Convention's Compliance Committee

2011 marks the tenth anniversary of the coming into force of the 1998 UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention in short). Heralded as the most impressive elaboration of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration when adopted, the Convention aims 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' through an emphasis on procedural rights. This proceduralisation, put forward in the Convention’s ‘three pillars’, aims to facilitate access to environmental information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters. In this venture, the Convention lends heavy emphasis to the involvement of NGOs while leaving contracting parties with significant discretion as a result of the Convention’s relatively weak obligations and references to “requirements under national law” when defining central features. Notwithstanding this, the Convention has had significant impact on UK environmental law. This is primarily so for two reasons. Firstly, despite the UK government taking no formal steps of implementation upon signing the Convention, changes to UK law has been made by virtue of EU directives facilitating implementation of the Convention on EU level. These include directives on enhanced public participation and access to environmental information. The second impact of the Aarhus Convention on UK law, is found in the ongoing litigation and debate on whether the reliance by the UK government on judicial review as the primary avenue of implementing Article 9 of the Convention (on access to justice) represents sufficient implementation of the Convention. The contentious issues when it comes to judicial review are that such procedures are expensive (possibly contravening Article 9(4) requiring that access to justice must not be prohibitively expensive) and the fact that the scope of judicial review is limited by reference to illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety (potentially in contravention of Article 9(4)’s requirement that review procedures must be adequate and effective). While these discussions have been ongoing for a while, they have recently received further attention as a result of a number of communications delivered by the Compliance Committee set up under the Aarhus Convention. The aim of this note is to analyze these communications relating to the UK’s compliance with the Convention.