[Index]
GREEN GROUPS CHALLENGE
GOVERNMENTS OVER
COMPLIANCE WITH TREATY OBLIGATIONS
Geneva, 14 May 2004 - The United
Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s
groundbreaking treaty on environmental
democracy, the Aarhus Convention,1
is facing a new test as its innovative
compliance mechanism is presented with
claims by non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) that certain Parties to the Convention
are failing to comply with their obligations.
The Aarhus Convention’s Compliance
Committee is meeting in Geneva this week
(13-14 May 2004) and the cases of alleged
non-compliance brought before it by NGOs
form a central part of its agenda.
The Convention requires
its Parties to guarantee the rights of
the public to have access to information,
to participate in decision-making and
to have access to justice in matters related
to the environment. A compliance mechanism
was put in place at the first meeting
of the Parties2 and an independent
Compliance Committee was elected to look
into possible cases of non-compliance.
The Aarhus compliance mechanism is unprecedented
among multilateral environmental agreements
in the extent to which it gives the public,
including NGOs, a role in triggering a
review of a Party’s compliance.
Several environmental organizations have
taken advantage of this relatively open
regime to challenge certain Parties over
their compliance with the Convention.
So far, five communications
have been submitted to the Compliance
Committee, three of these since the beginning
of May. These relate to:
- Alleged failure by the National
Atomic Company in Kazakhstan to provide
information on the economic justification
for a proposal to import nuclear waste;
- Granting of a permit to construct
a navigation canal through the Danube
Delta, an internationally recognized
wetland area in southern Ukraine,
allegedly without adequate public
participation in the permitting procedure;
- Alleged incompatibility of a new
Hungarian law on motorways with the
provisions of the Convention;
- Possible conflict between Turkmenistan’s
new law on public associations and
the provisions of the Convention;
and
- Construction of high-voltage power
lines in Kazakhstan, allegedly without
fulfilling the public participation
requirements of the Convention.
It will now be the task
of the Compliance Committee to investigate
these claims, initially through a process
of dialogue with the Parties concerned.
“It is important to emphasize that
the Committee has not reached any conclusions
as to whether any State is or is not in
compliance with the Convention. At this
point, we are simply asking questions
– for instance, is the communication
‘admissible’” said the
Committee’s Chairman, Prof. Veit
Koester, a former civil servant from Denmark
and distinguished veteran of negotiations
on many international environmental treaties.
“If and when the Committee does
reach some conclusions, these will be
referred to the Meeting of the Parties,
which will be the final arbiter as to
whether or not there is a case of non-compliance.”
Mr. Kaj Bärlund,
Director of the UNECE Environment and
Human Settlements Division, expressed
the hope that the mechanism would encourage
Governments to take their obligations
seriously and would thereby promote a
high level of compliance. “Through
responsible use of the compliance mechanism,
the public and in particular NGOs can
play an important role in stimulating
more effective implementation of the Convention,”
he said. He stressed that the mechanism
was designed to improve compliance and
was not intended as a redress procedure
for violations of individual rights. “The
basic approach behind the compliance mechanism
should be supportive rather than punitive.
If Parties are having problems complying
with the Convention, the mechanism should
identify this and find ways to support
them in coming into compliance.”
In a separate but related
development, the Working Group of the
Parties, the main intersessional body
of the Aarhus Convention, last week affirmed
the importance of consulting the public
during the preparation of national reports
on the implementation of the Convention.
The Working Group adopted an indicative
timetable according to which drafts of
the national implementation reports should
be publicly available over a period of
several weeks for the public to comment.
The first round of reports will be presented
at the second meeting of the Parties,
which will take place in Almaty, Kazakhstan,
in May 2005.
For more details, please visit www.unece.org/env/pp/compliance.htm
or contact:
Mr. Jeremy WATES, Secretary to the
Aarhus Convention
UNECE Environment and Human Settlements
Division
Palais des Nations
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0)22 917 23 84
Fax: +41 (0)22 917 01 07
E-mail: [email protected]
_________
1 The UNECE Convention on Access
to Information, Public Participation in
Decision-making and Access to Justice
in Environmental Matters was adopted in
Aarhus, Denmark, in June 1998 and entered
into force in October 2001. It now has
27 Parties: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark,
Estonia, France, Georgia, Hungary, Italy,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania,
Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic
of Moldova, Romania, Tajikistan, the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkmenistan
and Ukraine.
2 Lucca, Italy, October 2002.
Ref: ECE/ENV/04/P08