Report from the 1st Meeting of the Aarhus Task Force on Access to Justice (ATJ) on 16th and 17th February 2006, Geneva.
Parties
America, Austria Azerbajan, Belarus, Denmark, France, Germany, Humgary, Kazakhstan, Moldovo, Norway, Sweden, Tadjikistan, UK and the E.C.
Organisation
UNEP, European Union Forum of Judges for the Environment (ENJFE), REC (Regional Environment Centre for Central and Eastern Europe).
NGO’s
Environmental Law Service (Czech), Green Salvation (Kazakhston), European Eco-Forum, E-Law (USA), EPHA (Hungary), Earthjustice (Switzerland), Milreu Kortakt (Moldova) An Taisce, WWF (UK), World Resources Institute (USA).
Most of those present were environmental lawyers, law professors or senior judges. The purpose of the meeting was to explore the barriers that interfere with the access to justice ensconced in Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention (see appendix).
The meeting was at times very frustrating with the representatives of Germany, France and the UK acting in concert and being pedantic and obstructive over almost every minor recommendation.
Outcomes
- Information analytical and Training Material
It was agreed that the secretariat gather together all the exiting research and information regarding ATJ. Any gaps in this information are to be brought to the attention of the taskforce. - Capacity Building
Activities should initially be aimed at the higher levels of the judiciary, to raise their awareness of Aarhus and in particular Article 9, in order to enable them to exercise their discretion in such a way as to promote its implementation. This training should be specific to each legal system. - Remedies
It was obvious that due to the many different constitutional and legal systems operating in the different countries no overall list of remedies would be apparent. Discussions as to whether or not to have a questionnaire took up a considerable waste of time. - John Bonine (E-Law USA) gave a presentation that basically said that the bottom line, money, was the one common denomination in preventing ATJ. He pointed out that there are only 27 publicly supported environmental lawyers taking cases in the whole of Europe. There is an increasing use of slap suits and financial barriers in the US.
- The EC representative noted that although the Commission were keen to put together a Directive on ATJ, however according to her, the member states seemed to see it as unnecessary.
- France has attached an Environmental Charter to their constitution. Article 1 guarantees the right to a healthy environment and in Article 7 guaranteeing the right to Access to Information and Participation.
- Two presentations by REC and Austria on ADR (Altervative Dispute Resolution) outlined work being done to reduce the use of the courts using mediation techniques and gave examples of this in action. Visit the website at
www.lebenministerium.at
http://www.rec.org/REC/Programs/PublicParticipation/mediation/default/html
Mediation guarantees equality as a precondition, supports a culture of dialogue and co-operation, and gets away from rigid positions finding the interests underlying them and seeing where they overlap, as a basis for working towards a resolution.
Michael Ewing
Friends of the Irish Environment
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