March 3, 2006 PIELC - Eugene , USA

GLOBAL STATUS AND TRENDS IN ACCESS

Lalanath de Silva

Director, The Access Initiative & The Partnership for Principle 10

World Resources Institute, Washington DC

What this presentation covers…..

• Principle 10• The Access Initiative (TAI)• The method used to assess Govt.

performance on A2I, PP & A2J• Global status and trends• Global Report on Access (Oct 2007)

Background: Relevant International Commitments

1992178 governments sign the Rio

Declaration. Principle 10 mandated appropriate access to information, encouragement of public participation, and effective access to judicial proceedings.

2002 WSSD Plan of Implementation

calls on governments to implement Principle 10.

The Access Initiative’s goal…

…is to promote the accelerated and

enhanced implementation of Principle 10 at the

national level.

The Access Initiative’s strategy is to…• Develop and continuously

refine an indicator-based tool to assess government performance

• Support civil society teams in an increasing number of countries to conduct assessments

• Engage governments to act on assessment results and make legal and institutional changes implementing Principle 10

A set of research guidelines and questions allowing you to assess your government’s

systems for transparency, participation, and accountability in decisions that affect the

environment.

TAI Assessment Toolkit

TAI Assessment Toolkit

What does the toolkit measure?

• Law – through indicators focusing on constitutional and other national law, such as statutes or judicial decisions

• Practice – through indicators focusing on case studies from different sectors

TAI Assessment Toolkit

Categories:

I. Access to InformationII. ParticipationIII. Access to Justice IV. Capacity Building

TAI Assessment Toolkit

Categories• Access to Information

• Public Participation

• Access to Justice

• Capacity Building

Approach• Law

• Practice

Indicators• Regularity

• Timeliness

• Inclusion

• Quality

Version 2.0 Framework

Access to Information

Public Participation

Access to

Justice

Capacity

Building

Law

Effort

Effectiveness

Indicator Worksheets

Assessments to Action

Measure Progress• Establish current progress• Monitor progress over time• Generate reports

Engage Stakeholders• National level• International

networks

Take Action• Identify gaps• Set & address

priorities

Global status of access laws….

• Most countries had constitutional or legal rights of A2I, PP, and A2J.

• More and more countries are enacting such provisions.

• Yet many of these rights were restricted and or poorly enforced.

• Government agencies often did not respect these rights or had practices that negated or limited them.

Access to Information (A2I)….

• State of the environment reports

• Environmental Quality Information

• Regulatory & compliance info

• Emergency related info

Public Participation (PP)…

• Public involvement in national policy

• Public involvement in project planning

A2J – Legal aspects

• Most countries had forums where environmental claims could be brought.

• Rights of appeal/review were available against decisions made by most of these forums.

• Laws in most countries established reasonable timeframes for forum decision-making.

• Limits of confidentiality about claim related

information was mostly clear and narrow.

• Capacity building efforts for forum/sub-national officials was disparate and uneven.

• Public training, technical assistance etc ranked from strong to weak.

A2J – Effort by Government

• Most of the assessed countries have taken basic measures to ensure the independence and impartiality of the forum. On the other hand, the assessment also showed that in practice, independence and impartiality of the forum varied significantly from one country, forum or claim to another. The large majority of countries, proceedings before forums are transparent. By and large forum members have not been trained in Principle 10 rights and more effort to build capacity of forum members is needed. The adequacy of budgetary allocations for forums to function varied widely from one country or forum to another. In the majority of cases, public guidelines on using forums for redress were not available.

A2J – Effort by Government (Cont.)

• There is a good effort put into enabling parties to obtain all the relevant information and undertake fact finding needed for them to participate meaningfully in the claim proceedings. More needs to be done in developed and developing countries to reduce the costs of access to justice. When applicable much more needs to be done to proactively make forums accessible to the poor, minorities and the disadvantaged. While there are some cases where legal standing to pursue claims has been liberalized, in most other cases, standing is narrow and limited. In most cases forums were making a reasonable effort to minimize delays in issuing decisions. In most cases, there was only one forum available to file the claim.

A2J – Effectiveness

• Excepting a few cases implementation of the decision was weak. The majority of forum decisions had resulted in positive environmental, access or participatory outcomes. The perceptions of stakeholders varied from one country, claim and forum to another about how well forum members discharged their access to justice responsibilities. On the other hand, the prevailing perception tends to see the role of CSOs in promoting access to justice as significant.

Capacity Building – Govt efforts

• TAI assessments showed that the majority of countries invested little or nothing in staff capacity building. The majority of countries did not do enough to inform the public about where to go, whom to meet and how to get information in its possession. Most countries did little to fund or subsidize the activities of non-governmental organizations. Most Governments were making some, mostly inadequate, efforts at teacher training for environmental education. Four countries stood as good examples of capacity building. These were Mexico (Chiapas), Lithuania, Columbia and South Africa.

The Global Report on Access• World Resources Institute – Oct 2007• P10 & Human Rights• P10 world and actors• Global trends and Status• What are the benefits and costs of

P10• When does P10 work and not work• Making P10 tip – become the global

standard• Conclusions & recommendation