Aligning commitments: public participation, international decision-making, the environment

This paper provides an analysis of the overview of public participation policies in three decision-making arenas or processes:

• multilateral development bank assistance and lending
• negotiation of multilateral environmental agreements
• negotiation of trade and regional economic policies

The paper concludes by assessing of which of these arenas (as well as specific institutions within each arena) has made the most progress in making commitments to formally opening its decision-making on the environment to public participation.

The paper makes the following broad observations across the three categories regarding the internalisation of the Aarhus Convention’s organising principles: access to information, access to participation, and access to justice:

• access to information is the best developed principle across all institutions
• while general policies on public participation are quickly becoming the norm, specific standards or procedures for such participation are less consistent
• public participation at the national level is uniformly weak; domestic stakeholders have limited ability to influence international decisions that affect their environment
• institutions and agreements subject to the greatest public scrutiny have the most advanced policy frameworks with regard to public participation
• no common methodology exists for assessing the implementation and practice of public participation; such a methodology is needed to assess the full impact of changes in policies mandating public participation