Information Disclosure and Environmental Rights: The Aarhus Convention

Michael Mason
Additional contact information
Michael Mason: Michael Mason is Senior Lecturer with the Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK. In addition to publishing in a wide range of academic journals, he is the author of Environmental Democracy (1999) and The New Accountability: Environmental Responsibility across Borders (2005). His recent research is on climate change mitigation and adaptation in the Middle East, which has resulted in a co-edited volume (with Amit Mor) Renewable Energy in the Middle East (2009) and lead authorship of the UNDP Report Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2010).

Global Environmental Politics, 2010, vol. 10, issue 3, 10-31

Abstract: Access to information is the first "pillar" of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998). This article examines how the information disclosure obligations on states within the Aarhus Convention express a particular blend of human environmental rights, conjoining procedural entitlements (and duties) with a substantive right to an environment adequate to human health and well-being. "Aarhus environmental rights" have been lauded for increasing citizen access to environmental information, helping to secure more transparent and accountable regulatory processes. However, the information rights are rendered inconsistent in practice by three properties: 1) the discretion accorded to Convention Parties in interpreting Aarhus rights; 2) the exclusion of private entities from mandatory information disclosure duties; and 3) the indeterminate coupling of procedural and substantive rights. These tensions reflect a structural imbalance in the articulation of Aarhus rights between social welfare and market liberal perspectives. (c) 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/GLEP_a_00012 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:10:y:2010:i:3:p:10-31

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1526-3800

Access Statistics for this article

Global Environmental Politics is currently edited by Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Erika Weinthal

More articles in Global Environmental Politics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().