PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY AND GOOD GOVERNANCE:
FUNDAMENTAL TOOLS FOR A HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Side Event at the World Summit on Sustainable Development
Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa
26 August 2002
Opening remarks by Mrs B. Schmögnerová, Executive
Secretary,
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
It gives me pleasure to welcome all of you here today. I am
doing so on behalf of the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe, the
Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe and the United
Nations Economic Commissions for Europe, who have jointly organized this side
event.
The event addresses a topic which is of key importance in the
context of the Summit. There is a growing acceptance that sustainable development
must involve good governance and the co-operation and participation of many
stakeholders, including the general public. Without active civil society involvement,
sustainable development will be unattainable. The crucial role of the public
was already recognised in Rio, in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment
and Development. The question is then, how to go forward from Rio, taking
account of the ongoing debates on the need for good governance and on the
linkage between environmental issues and human rights.
In my capacity as Executive Secretary of UNECE, I am pleased to say that
the ECE region has made great strides forward in this area since the Rio conference,
notably through the adoption in 1998 of the Aarhus Convention - the UNECE
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making
and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. The Convention has been described
by the UN Secretary-General as 'the most ambitious venture in environmental
democracy undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations [whose] adoption
was a remarkable step forward in the development of international law'.
The Aarhus Convention is unique among multilateral environmental agreements
in the extent to which it gives rights to the public. Thus it can be seen
as an instrument linking environmental issues with the human rights sphere.
The Convention entered into force last October and the Parties to the Convention
will hold their first meeting this coming October. To date, 22 countries have
become Parties. Many of these are from the poorer countries of our region
- Central and Eastern Europe and States of the former Soviet Union (CIS) -
underlining the point that environmental rights should not be regarded as
a luxury reserved for the rich nations.
NGOs were involved in the development of the Convention, to an extent unprecedented
in the negotiation of any international law. This was considered necessary
to ensure the relevance of the text to the actual needs and concerns of members
of the public likely to be seeking to exercise rights of information, participation
and justice. NGOs have continued to be actively involved in the implementation
process.
The Convention was not reached in a single step. In 1995, Ministers meeting
in Sofia, Bulgaria, at the Third Ministerial 'Environment for Europe' conference
endorsed a set of guidelines on the same topic. The Sofia Guidelines served
as a stepping stone to the Convention.
There can be no doubt that taking a region-wide approach has been an enormous
stimulus to activities promoting environmental democracy at all levels within
the ECE region. Other regions may wish to consider developing different regional
instruments promoting environmental democracy, either of a binding or a non-binding
character. But perhaps the Aarhus Convention can serve as a useful model or
reference point in that context. It represents one approach, which has so
far proved successful in our region.
The Aarhus Convention is open to accession by any Member State of the United
Nations, not only by UNECE member states. For some countries outside the ECE
region, this possibility may be of interest. The UNECE is willing to share
with other regions the experience we have gained through developing the Aarhus
Convention, as well as to learn from the experiences gained in other regions.
We welcome the recent decision by ESCAP to develop guidelines on information,
participation and justice and have pledged our support to that process.
We have today a distinguished panel of speakers representing different regions
and different areas of expertise. It is a wide-ranging topic and there is
only limited time, so panellists are asked to limit their statements to 4
minutes to allow time for discussion. I am hopeful that we will have a fruitful
exchange of views in the next 90 minutes and that this will contribute to
a dialogue, or many dialogues, which will continue in the coming months and
years and which will lay the basis for better governance, more respect for
citizens' environmental rights and greater involvement of civil society in
shaping the decisions which in turn shape the future of the planet.