Adoption of the Aarhus Convention gave significant incentives to the development of environmental human rights in Europe. This created new opportunities for environmental movement and NGOs to influence the country and regional development. Nowadays the Convention has tow major areas of work – its own further development and implementation on national level.
Aarhus Convention is indeed a process, which started with its adoption in 1998. The Convention has several working bodies – Working Groups and Task Forces, in additional to regular Meetings of the Parties. The parties work through these bodies to further develop and implement the Convention (by adoption amendments, protocols, e.g.). On national level parties and NGOs make efforts to improve practical implementation (enforcement) of the Convention,
These processes cover several issues. We are particularly interested in increasing NGO capacity to use the Convention, raising effectiveness of the compliance mechanism (including capacity of the public to use its right to approach the Compliance Committee), participating in the meetings of the working bodies (in fact, international negotiations), such as Access to Justice Task Force. The developments under Espoo Convention (on environmental impact assessment in transboundary context) are also relevant in this context, especially public participation and SEA issues.
Significant part of our work in this area is done under the framework of the Europen ECO Forum - a coalition of environmental NGOs from UN ECE region. ECO Forum plays a leading coordination role in Aarhus Convention processes. For this reason, geographical scope of our activities is regional. RAC “Society and Environment” is member of the Public Participation Campaign Committee, we serve as ECO Forum legal focal point for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) region. The latter is especially true for our work in compliance area.
Projects:
- Improving Access to Justice in Environmental Matters under Aarhus Convention (2006)
- Making the Aarhus Convention Work for Civil Society (2007-2008)
Publications:
- The Nest of Justice (rus and eng)
- Case Law of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (rus and eng)
Resources:
