The first international convention on citizens' environmental rights was formally signed here by ministers or senior officials representing 37 of the participating countries at this week's Pan-European environment conference, which concluded yesterday. Notable absentees from the signing ceremony in the sun-drenched Aarhus Concert Hall were the US, Canada, Russia, Turkey and Germany. Most of them said they agreed with the principle of public participation in decision-making on the environment, but they had "difficulties" with some of the details.
The Aarhus Convention guarantees freedom of access to information on the environment, gives citizens a right to participate and even provides for recourse to the courts or some other impartial body in cases where these rights are denied by governmental agencies.
Senior Irish officials attending the conference said the new convention went beyond the EU directive in this area by solemnly declaring in its preamble that citizens have a right to a clean, healthy environment. Its definition of what constitutes environmental information is also somewhat broader.
Reflecting the unprecedented involvement of environmental groups in the negotiations, the convention covers information on air, water, soils, land and biological diversity as well as their interaction with environmental policy, legislation, planning, economic analyses, human health and safety.
Mr Svend Auken, the Danish environment minister, drew some laughter when he suggested that the relatively open process which led to Aarhus - particularly the involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - could provide a model for talks in other areas, notably international trade.
However, although the NGOs represented here have welcomed the convention as "a significant step forward in international law", they remain deeply unhappy about the inevitable compromises that had to be made to achieve an agreed text as well as the "destructive" role played by some countries.
"The convention provides only for access to information held by public authorities, not corporations," said Ms Iza Kruszewska, of the ECO forum.
"Given that toxic emissions from industry are being dumped into the public domain, shouldn't the record of those toxic emissions be provided to the public?"
ECO also criticised the failure to extend public participation to the development of genetic engineering. "It is nothing less than scandalous that a technology that interferes with the very building blocks of life should be given lower priority than decision-making on as minor an issue as the control of chicken farms."
However, Ms Margaretha de Boer, the Dutch environment minister, denied that the convention was a "weak compromise"; on the contrary, it was "a milestone in European environmental policy-making". It would become an important tool for citizens, researchers, journalists and grassroot movements.
Under the convention, governments are obliged to collect and disseminate information on the environment, to ensure that citizens can participate in decisions on new activities which could cause pollution - through public hearings, for example - and to give everyone a right of recourse to the courts, if necessary.
Its implementation is seen as particularly crucial in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, where access to reliable information on the environment and the role of NGOs in raising the level of public awareness of environmental issues are seen as a prerequisite to developing a "civil society".
Mr Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme and former environment minister in Germany, specifically cited ENFO - the Dublin-based environmental information service established by the Government in 1990 - as a model which other countries could usefully follow.
He said many countries had examined the ENFO model and some were now in the process of establishing similar environmental information centres, where a broad range of information is provided through a "one-stop shop". At present, however, ENFO has the distinction of being the only one of its kind in the world.
