July 3, 2012: Panel 4D - Public Participation in Environmental Governance

Public Participation in Environmental Governance Video

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:30:00 PDT

Environmental Compliance & Enforcement: the Role of Access to Information and Public Participation

Claudia S. de Windt — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:30:00 PDT

Good governance supports the process that links and harmonizes policies, institutions, procedures, tools, and information to empower stakeholders to make fundamental decisions, manage conflicts, seek points of consensus, and be accountable for their actions. In order to achieve good governance, public participation must be promoted; as Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration states: environmental issues are best handled with participation of all citizens, at the relevant level.^{^[1]} Public participation has to be seen as an inclusive interaction between government and civil society, incorporating the process by which they not only open dialogue, establish partnerships, share information, but also interact in designing, implementing, and evaluating development policies, projects and programs.^{^[2]} Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration, in addition, points out that public participation is part of a wider process which includes access to information, to the decision making process and the judicial system as a means to improve environmental governance^{^[3]}, describing access to environmental information as a right for individuals, and disclosure of information as an objective to facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation. The policy framework of the Inter-American Strategy for Public Participation in Decision-Making forSustainable Development (ISP) contains the basic principles, goals, and policy recommendations for greater involvement of all sectors of society in decision-making on sustainable development. In this context, the presentation delivered at the IUCN Academy Colloquium will discuss the links between the three elements of public participation and how they have been advanced in theAmericas to improve enforcement of environmental laws. Concrete examples from the region will be used to illustrate how through participation environmental law can further realize its potential.

[1] Rio Declaration, Principle 10. http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=78&articleid=1163

[2] Inter-American Strategy for Public Participation in Decision-Making for Sustainable Development, http://www.oas.org/dsd/PDF_files/ispenglish.pdf, p. 1.

[3] Rio Declaration, Principle 10. http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=78&articleid=1163

Environmental NGOs and Sustainable Development in China - Twenty Years after the Rio Conference

Zhao Yuhong — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:30:00 PDT

China’s participation in the Rio Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 has led to important reforms of its domestic environmental law and governance with increasing emphasis on sustainable development and public participation. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration provides that “[e]nvironmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level...” To honour its commitment to sustainable development, the State Council promulgated China’s Agenda 21 – White Paper on China’s Population, Environment, and Development in the 21st Century in 1994. It formally recognized the important value of environmental NGOs, emphasizing the essential need of public support and participation in order to achieve sustainable development (chapter 20). Sustainable development soon became the national strategy for implementation from central to local levels.

The international and domestic political and socio-economic context of the 1990s provided a golden opportunity for the emergence of green NGOs in China. A few environmental groups have survived and flourished, making substantial impact on China’s environmental decision making for a sustainable future. But, their success stories are not easily reproduced given the tight control by state regulation through the “dual control mechanism” and the constaints imposed by the socio-political reality. There is no complete freedom of association in establishment or full autonomy in operation.

This paper examines, through case studies, how some environmental NGOs have managed to expand the legal and polical boundary with changing agendas from educating the public through awareness campaigns and community programmes such as water-saving, bird-watching and tree-planting to public participation and supervision of government decision making. They have made effective use of the environmental legal development over the last twenty years to influence the outcomes of government decision-making and to supervise government and corporate behaviours. It argues that, twenty years after the Rio Conference, green NGOs in China have demonstrated their potential ability to become a reliable force to promote and monitor the implementation of sustainable development. Regretably, successful cases are small in number and do not represent the routine practice of a still weak and under-developed civil society in China. It is hoped that China’s commitment to sustainable development will lead to more political space for the civil society to develop sooner rather than later.

Governance and Environmental Democracy: a Global Policy

Carla Aceves-Avila — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:30:00 PDT

In legal terms, and through the late decades sustainable development has transformed from an economic development theory to a public policy obligation that in turn has also translated in practice into concrete rights and obligations in legal systems throughout the world. These rights and obligations apply both to individuals and governments through constitutional, civil, administrative, commercial and even criminal legal rules.

Environmental law has become an essential tool for governance and administration of sustainable development while environmental democracy and its elements are becoming essential for a safe and sound planetary cohabitation. Environmental democracy provides the basis for the policies and government actions that may ensure that the use of natural resources is equitable and sustainable at a time. Based on environmental problems of global dimensions such as climate change, environmental degradation, and energy crisis, the proposal of efficient means of assuring peaceful wellbeing of humanity is necessary. Even though it is not exclusively a legal nor a political problem, world governance will strongly rely on coherent and efficient implementation of environmental democracy throughout the current century.

This paper will explore and identify the role of environmental law and environmental democracy in particular, for the achievement of governance and democracy in general, trying to ensure sustainable development considering global environmental issues. This will be done through the analysis of elements contained in traditional soft law instruments, as well as those contained under economical and political international instruments influenced by sustainable development policies, trying to identify and propose the possibility of current innovative environmental governance policies.