Chapter 3: Strengthening Environmental Governance


building for cross-sectoral and sectoral inclusive green economy approaches, including enabling frameworks, and co-operative action for sustainable consumption and lifestyle changes in the areas of housing, food, mobility, leisure and tourism, together with public institutions, business, civil society and citizens.


3.4.6 Public participation Increasing the formal and informal level of citizens’ involvement in all environmental matters is key to good performance of environmental policies (Bernauer and Betzhold 2012; Rask et al. 2012; OECD 2001), but also to inclusiveness and overall justice. There is evidence that the level of citizens’ participation in the region is positively correlated with the level of environmental policy performance. That is, the degree of the general openness of the political system to creating democratic “deliberative” (Gutmann and Thompson 2004; Carpini et al. 2004) or “interactive” mechanisms (Leggewie 2004) that serves as a baseline for a political culture of participation needed for ecological modernization (Jänicke and Jacob 2006; Jänicke 2005). Improved environmental performance in this regard could result from a higher degree of social acceptance and political legitimacy of environmental policy measures (Lucke 1995). Improved performance could also result from mobilizing the additional social and cultural capacities of citizens that are needed for them to become more involved in environmental policy decision-making and implementation (Newig and Koontz 2014). Besides more experimentation with formal and informal citizen’s participation within the countries of the region, there are also promising signs with regard to increased involvement of citizens in global environmental matters. One example includes the deliberative process focusing on world citizens’ views on climate and energy leading up to the UNFCCC COP-21 conference, in which 10 000 people in 76 countries participated (Danish Board of Technology Foundation 2015).


The 1998 Aarhus Convention (More...141) provides a solid starting point for increased public participation. Its focus links government accountability, transparency and responsiveness to environmental protection. The 2003


Kyiv Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR) has helped strengthen this governance system with respect to access to information on pollutants. To promote the implementation of the Aarhus Convention, Aarhus Centres have been established with the support of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). As of December 2014, 57 OSCE-supported centres are in operation. The Aarhus Centres aim at strengthening environmental governance at the national level by facilitating policy dialogue between the government and the public, as well as other stakeholders, offering guidance to the public, performing awareness-raising activities for various target groups, assisting the public to participate in environmental decision-making and facilitating access to justice.


However, implementation of the Convention and its Protocol remains uneven across the region, and the extent to which they have mitigated negative distributional consequences and environmental justice problems remains open. The challenge ahead is to systematically incorporate various dimensions of justice into environmental policy; for example, intra- and inter-generational justice, procedural justice and distributional justice. This would help make environmental policy a stronger force for social inclusion, fairness and overall justice in societies of the region.


The EU, which is a party to this Convention since 2005, has developed a series of secondary laws to strengthen the Aarhus Convention and its implementation by Member States, in specific environmental areas such as the Water Framework Directive (More...142). The EC also provides relevant information in relation to the three pillars of the Aarhus Convention and has launched several training sessions for judges and magistrates, including an E-Justice portal. Strengthening public participation in environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessments is also key to better governance and policy implementation (More...143).


Reports to the Compliance Committee of the Aarhus Convention indicate that many Parties in the pan- European region are, despite significant progress, still


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