sustainable development 20 years on from the ... - José Eli da Veiga

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B. ACCESS TO INFORMATION, PARTICIPATION AND JUSTICE
IN ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING
In the past two decades, countries in the region have made major progress in the legal recognition of
rights of access to information, participation and justice in environmental matters. Examples are Mexico’s
federal law on transparency and access to public government information (<strong>20</strong>02), Chile’s law on access to
public information (<strong>20</strong>09), and Peru’s law, enacted in <strong>20</strong>11, on indigenous peoples’ right to prior
consultation, as recognized in Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO). In
addition, the vast majority of the environment-related framework laws passed since the 1980s incorporate
access to information and citizen participation, either through consultation or by convening organized
civil society or integrating it directly into some form of management body. As in other parts of the world,
civil society has played an important role in disseminating the access rights enshrined in principle 10 of
the Rio Declaration in the region. Of particular note are the large-scale, coordinated efforts of around 64
non-governmental and civil society organizations in the region, which, under The Access Initiative 7 and
assisted by ECLAC, have supported government processes and pushed for more effective implementation
of access rights. Since <strong>20</strong>02, The Access Initiative in Latin America has assessed access to information,
participation and justice in decision-making processes that affect the environment in 15 countries of the
region, providing an independent evaluation of progress towards implementation of principle 10. The
main advances and remaining gaps regarding the three components of principle 10 are outlined below.
1. Access to information
In most countries in the region, access to information is guaranteed in the constitution (for example, in
Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru) or through specific laws (as in Brazil and Ecuador). In addition,
some countries have enacted specific laws on access to environmental information, including Argentina
(Law 25831 of January <strong>20</strong>04), Mexico and the Plurinational State of Bolivia (The Access Initiative,
<strong>20</strong>05). Many countries have introduced into domestic law the obligation for a designated authority to
submit information on the state of the environment at specified intervals. In special cases, as in Colombia,
the constitution enshrines an obligation to produce annual reports on the state of the environment.
Countries in the region have therefore invested significant human and financial resources in
compiling and disseminating information and in reporting on compliance with obligations under
multilateral environmental agreements. As already mentioned, the expansion of access to and the use of
information and communication technologies have been a major factor in the dissemination of available
information. Despite this progress, not all of the region’s public organizations systematically disclose
available information (Acuña, <strong>20</strong>10).
A promising initiative, implemented in Chile and Mexico as a result of commitments acquired in
the free trade agreements that these countries have signed with the United States, involves, as mentioned
in the previous chapter, publishing freely accessible pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) on
the Internet (United Nations, <strong>20</strong>10). Other bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements have included
articles or chapters recognizing the importance of access to environmental information.
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The Access Initiative is a network of civil society organizations that works to ensure that citizens have the rights
and the abilities to influence decisions regarding the natural resources that sustain their communities. For more
details, see [online] http://www.accessinitiative.org/