Abstract:
Procedural environmental law, also known as environmental democracy consists of three Pillars, which include the right of access to environmental information, the right of participation in environmental decision-making procedures and the right of access to justice. Environmental democracy is granted to citizens for their empowerment in order to protect their health against environmental damage and to ensure the environment. The aim of this study is to investigate the above rights in the international documents, jurisprudence and domestic legal systems of some leading States and then to analyse the Iranian legal system through a descriptive-analytical method. We found that Iranian legal system still suffers from some gaps despite the positive efforts to achieve environmental democracy in recent years. The most important issues are the lack of specific rules on people’s access to environmental information, a favorable system for citizen participation in environmental decisions, and a dedicated environmental court
Procedural environmental law, also known as environmental democracy consists of three Pillars, which include the right of access to environmental information, the right of participate in environmental decision-making procedures and the right of access to justice. Environmental democracy is granted to citizens for their empowerment in order to protect their health against environmental damage and to ensure the environment. The aim of this study is to investigate the above rights in the international documents, jurisprudence and domestic legal systems of some leading states and then analysis the Iranian legal system with a descriptive-analytical method. We found that Iranian legal system still suffers from some gaps despite the positive efforts to achieve environmental democracy in recent years. The most important issues are the lack of specific rules on people’s access to environmental information, a favorable system for citizen participation in environmental decisions, and a dedicated environmental court.
Machine summary:
In Article 1 states that, "In order to contribute to the protection of the right of every person of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to his or her health and well-being, each Party shall guarantee the rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters in accordance with the provisions of this Convention.
4. The Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters was signed by 35 European Economic Commission member States in 1998 in Aarhus.
Referring to Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights, the court addresses the legal restrictions of this right and declares that the restrictions provided by law to guarantee the rights and good reputation of individuals, national security, public health or other purposes under the Convention allowed necessity, are acceptable.
Access to justice in environmental matters is a set of guarantees that allows citizens including NGOs to challenge the legality of decisions, acts or omissions of public authorities of the Member States before a national judge.
Article 11 of the 2015 Draft of the International Covenant on the Human Right to the Environment refers to this matter under the title of Right to Recourse, accordingly everyone has the right to effective recourse before competent judicial or any impartial and independent administrative bodies to challenge acts or omissions of public or private persons who violate national or international environmental law.
5. Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision- Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, 1998.