Access to Information
Access to Information in international law
The right of everyone to receive environmental information that is held by public authorities. This can include information on the state of the environment, but also on policies or measures taken, or on the state of human health and safety where this can be affected by the state of the environment. Applicants are entitled to obtain this information within one month of the request and without having to say why they require it. In addition, public authorities are obliged, under the Convention, to actively disseminate environmental information in their possession.
Of the three “pillars”, public access to information occurs most frequently as an element in environmental agreements. The information to be made publicly available depends on the scope and purpose of the agreement itself. In some contexts, the information concerns a particular procedure or installation, as in the case of environmental impact assessment procedures, and prevention and emergency planning for hazardous activities (including nuclear activities). In other cases, the information concerns particular substances, for instance hazardous chemicals or genetically modified organism. Yet other information on environmental matters to be publically available may concern legislation, decisions by administrative authorities or judgements by courts.
The Aarhus Convention provides all environmental information, which is defined in the Convention, to be publically available on request, subject only to certain grounds for refusals. It also requires, in particular with its 2003 Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR Protocol), that certain information is made publically available regardless of specific requests. This implies a kind of “right-to-know”, which is also reflected in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights with respect to hazardous activities (European Court of Human Rights in, Guerra and others v Italy, 14967/89 of 19 February 1998).
The support for access to environmental information in several environmental agreements with global and regional application, in the jurisprudence of regional human rights bodies (European Court of Justice, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the African Commission on Human & Peoples’ Rights) and in the United Nations International Law Commission’s 2001 Articles on Prevention of Transboundary Harm from Hazardous Activities (ILC Articles). It appears to be the form of participatory and procedural right for which there is most support in international law. Since no meaningful public participation can take place without due access to information, it makes sense to build on this aspect.
For the presentation on "Access to information in environmental matters: Implementation and application of Aarhus convention and the Directive 2003/4/EC at national level" see:
Implementation and application of Aarhus convention and the Directive 2003/4/EC at national level
Áine Ryall