Such projects create new opportunities for employment, travel and economic growth. At the same time, they may have an immense impact on ecosystems and human health and well-being. With the above in mind, the two sessions featured a Joint High-level Segment on 21 October where delegations focused on the role of the Aarhus Convention and its Protocol in furthering sustainable infrastructure and spatial planning.
Parties to both treaties and a wide range of stakeholders adopted the Geneva Declaration on Environmental Democracy for Sustainable, Inclusive and Resilient Development thereby reinforcing their commitment to promoting the transparent and participatory infrastructure and spatial planning, which will help to uphold the right of every person of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to his or her health and well-being and achieve Sustainable Development Goals.
More options. The Aarhus Convention is created to empower the role of citizens and civil society organisations in environmental matters and is founded on the principles of participative democracy. The Aarhus Convention establishes a number of rights to the individuals and civil society organizations with regard to the environment.
The Parties to the Convention are required to make the necessary provisions so that public authorities, at a national, regional or local level, will contribute to these rights to become effective. Bamako Convention Africa. Espoo Convention Europe. Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment Europe. Documents and Literature Contacts Hub. Keywords :.
Treaty text URL :. Indeed, it is interesting to note that 28 the aarhus convention was not included in this paragraph, although, 29 as will be discussed below, it plays an important role. It is also interesting to note that uNcLoS is mentioned, 33 whereas both parties were in the process of establishing an uNcLoS arbi- 34 tral tribunal for determining the question whether or not the operation of 35 the MoX plant violates uNcLoS obligations of the uK.
Moreover, it should be noted that the UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal irst stayed the proceed- 40 ings in order to await the decision of the ecJ regarding the scope of its jurisdiction. If so, has the uK redacted and withheld any and what information requested by Ireland contrary to article 9 3 2 oSPar convention?
A The Applicable Law the majority on the tribunal, consisting of reisman and Mustill, started off its analysis by stating the obvious, ie, that the dispute is governed by the oSPar convention and that the Vienna convention on the Law of treaties VcLt 28 governs the construction of the provisions of the oSPar convention.
Its drafters 15 plainly perceived the oSPar convention as an integral part of a matrix of interna- 16 tional instruments directed to environmental protection35 emphasis added. In other words, 26 interpreting article 9 oSPar convention in a deviating way could 27 reduce the effectiveness of the right to access to information, which in 28 turn could lower the level of environmental protection in general.
In order 29 to avoid such a development and instead achieve consistency with the 30 other similar source, Grifith considered it necessary and appropriate to 31 explain the relevance of the aarhus convention and the various ec law 32 measures.
Thus, Grifith considered the OSPAR convention as lex sprecialis in the sense that the dispute about the inter- pretation and application of article 9 oSPar convention is fully but not exclusively regulated by the oSPar convention. In other words, while the OSPAR Convention is the irst and foremost instrument to consider for resolving the present dispute, it is also necessary and appropriate to take cognizance of the other relevant MSeNs. If ec law 4 is so clearly at issue in this dispute, the general question arises whether the 5 dispute should not have been brought before the ecJ in accordance with 6 article ec, which prescribes that all disputes between ec Member 7 States that touch on community law must be brought exclusively before 8 the ecJ.
However, as Grifith 26 rightly argued, one simply cannot ignore the fact that this dispute involves 27 two ec Member States, which means that existing community law is 28 binding on both parties and therefore is somehow relevant to this dispute. According to Grifith, the main question is whether both reports as a whole fall, in principle, within the scope of article 9 2 oSPar convention, rather than determining whether or not speciic parts of the redacted sections of the reports fall within this scope.
In this important ruling regarding the right to access to environmental information, the ECJ gave the following broad deinition: 50 See above n At the least, these trends appear to broaden the content of the deinition of envi- ronmental information so as explicitly to include cost-beneit and other eco- nomic analyses.
Whether or not that is a correct assump- tion remains speculative. In any case, the advantage of this approach is that the majority of the oSPar arbitral tribunal was able to dispose of the case in a clean and simple way, without having to indulge in an extensive analysis regarding other relevant sources, their content and their interpre- tative potential for solving the dispute.
Indeed, the oSPar arbitral tribu- nal avoided giving a clear answer to the question whether or not the uK was required to grant Ireland access to the redacted parts of the reports under instruments other than the oSPar convention. Interestingly, much 58 Ibid dissenting opinion para In other words, 19 if the narrow interpretation becomes the standard for oSPar, contracting 20 Parties to, for example, the aarhus convention could claim that the nar- 21 row approach is generally accepted and thus should also be used to inform 22 the aarhus convention.
So, the establishment of a restrictive approach 23 not only undermines the very purpose of the oSPar convention, which 24 is after all the effective protection of the marine environment, but may 25 weaken the effectiveness of other related environmental law instruments. In fact, this norm fragmentation is 29 particularly disturbing considering the fact that all the MSeNs are closely 30 related in terms of substance and affect the same parties, ie, Ireland, uK 31 and the ec.
In light of these considerations, the question arises: how to avoid those negative effects associated with the restrictive approach to the MSeN issue. In short, comity means that judges and arbitrators are irst of all aware of other sources and judicial decisions relevant to a speciic dispute.
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