Is Aarhus the answer?: a comparison of the effectiveness of environmental information access rights under the Aarhus Convention, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (UK) and the Official Information Act 1982 (NZ)

Abstract

This paper examines the effectiveness of the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Convention) in ensuring public access to environmental information. This paper first examines the content and history of the information access rights set out in the Convention and discusses the enforcement mechanism and case law under the Convention. It then discusses the information access regimes in the domestic law of the United Kingdom and New Zealand and assesses the effectiveness of those regimes in ensuring public access to environmental information. Finally this paper concludes that the United Kingdom regime goes much further toward ensuring effective access to environmental information than the New Zealand regime. This paper recommends three potential improvements to the New Zealand regime to take account of the special status of environmental information recognised at international law.