The Aarhus Convention: a partial solution for the environmental & democratic crises?

Abstract

The Aarhus Convention is designed to develop citizenship in environmental matters aiming at a better protection of the environment. It is founded on the idea that public participation will improve environmental protection in member states. The Convention is based on three complementary pillars, (1) access to environmental information, (2) active public participation in environmental matters, (3) access to justice relating to environmental matters. This thesis is based on the premise that western democracies are in the midst of an environmental crisis and are experiencing a number of democratic deficiencies. This paper presents an investigation on the potential of the Aarhus Convention to partly contribute both to solving the environmental crisis and to counter the democratic deficiencies defined in the first part of the thesis. This research is divided in three main parts. The first part defines the problem at hand (ie. the environmental crisis and the democratic deficiencies), part II describes the obligations and rights derived from the Aarhus Convention in an objective fashion and the third part investigates on the potential of the Aarhus Convention in contributing to both problems.