Access to Justice

As far as global treaty regimes are concerned the strongest support for access to justice in environmental matters is found in human rights regimes rather than in multilateral environmental agreements. The 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as the regional human rights accords provide for a right to a fair trial that applies also to environmental matters.

The right to access to justice is provided for in the Aarhus Convention and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. Both agreements require that the parties ensure certain procedural guarantees or minimum standards, and remedies, and these requirements are set with some degree of details. Outside Europe and North America, the only environmental agreement providing for access to justice, but without any detail whatsoever, is the 2003 African Nature Conservation Convention.

International agreements and documents of global reach

Despite the recognition of access to judicial procedures and remedies in the 1992 Rio Declaration and the 2002 Johannesburg Plan of Action, thus far no environmental agreements of global reach provides for access to justice. Nor do the International Law Commission (ILC) Articles contain any provision on access to legal review of some sort. Therefore, on the global scope, support for access to review procedure in environmental matters is rather to be found in human rights law. In particular, the notion of access to justice in environmental matters draws on the right to a fair trial, set out e.g. in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). However, as far as jurisprudence on a fair trial is concerned, this has mainly been developed by regional human rights bodies.