Information, Public Participation, and Justice

July 2002
Citation:
32
ELR 10784
Issue
7
Author
Frances Irwin and Carl Bruch

An informed and active civil society plays an integral role in realizing sustainable development. Involving citizens,1 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and businesses expands the knowledge base and resources for developing laws and policies, as well as improving compliance and enforcement. Public involvement can identify problems at an early stage, allowing them to be addressed while options are still open. As a result, transparency and public involvement improve the credibility, effectiveness, and accountability of governmental decisionmaking processes, ultimately resulting in better implementation of sustainable development objectives.

The United States has been an international leader in promoting transparency, participation, and accountability, both generally and in the environmental context. This Article examines the progress that the United States has made, as well as the problems encountered, over the last decade. It examines the international norms and standards for access to information and public participation articulated in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21, as well as regional instruments clarifying and implementing these principles. In many cases, the international standards have been inspired by or drawn upon specific U.S. laws and institutions such as environmental impact assessment (EIA) and freedom of information laws. As international standards develop, though, a number of them envisage a broader public role than the U.S. legal system currently allows. Examples include a right of access to information (not just a statutory empowerment), developing and using indicators of sustainable development and environmental governance, mandating state and local authorities to guarantee access to information and public participation, establishing a national entity to provide public leadership on public participation in sustainable development, and ensuring broad access to courts.

[Editors' Note: In June 1992, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world formally endorsed the concept of sustainable development and agreed to a plan of action for achieving it. One of those nations was the United States. In August 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, these nations will gather in Johannesburg to review progress in the 10-year period since UNCED and to identify steps that need to be taken next. In anticipation of the Rio + 10 summit conference, Prof. John C. Dernbach is editing a book that assesses progress that the United States has made on sustainable development in the past 10 years and recommends next steps. The book, which is scheduled to be published by the Environmental Law Institute in June 2002, is comprised of chapters on various subjects by experts from around the country. This Article will appear as a chapter in that book. Further information on the book will be available at www.eli.org or by calling 1-800-433-5120 or 202-939-3844.]

Frances Irwin currently coordinates U.S. participation in the Access Initiative as a Fellow at the World Resources Institute. Since 1973, she has worked as an environmental policy analyst and advocate for state, national, and international nongovernmental groups, including the Vermont Natural Resources Council, the Conservation Foundation, and the World Wildlife Fund. Carl Bruch is a Senior Attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, the Coordinator of the Partnership for Public Participation, and co-author of the U.S. case study for the Access Initiative. The authors express their appreciation to John Chelen, John Dernbach, Paul Orum, John Pendergrass, and Elena Petkova for their insightful comments on drafts of this Article. The views in this Article and any errors are those of the authors.

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