The Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters is an inspiring UN treaty that sets out how procedural environmental justice should be achieved.

The Convention recognises the link between the protection of human rights and the environment, and every person’s right to a healthy environment – as well as his or her duty to protect it. This applies not only to those of us living today, but to future generations as well.

Aarhus upholds the following rights for every person:

• the right to be informed and have access to information about the environment;
• the right to participate in environmental decision making; and
• the right of easy and effective access to justice if the former rights are denied

The last of these three enables the public to challenge general breaches of environmental law, even if they have not suffered personal harm. This is crucial in fighting decisions that lead to climate damaging developments.

In addition, the Convention states that access to justice under any of these headings must not be “prohibitively expensive”. 

Unfortunately, in Scotland we are still some way off complying with Aarhus.

Aarhus in Scotland

Scotland, as an Aarhus signatory through the UK and the EU's ratification of the treaty, is legally obliged to implement all three pillars. The first two pillars have been legislated for in Scotland under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005.

However, there is no specific Scottish legislation which implements the final pillar, access to justice. All kinds of barriers stand in the way when people and communities try to legally challenge a badly made decision or a damaging development.

In fact, the odds are so stacked against the ordinary citizen who wants to challenge an environmentally damaging decision or act, that going to court to defend a healthy and clean environment has become a luxury that effectively only the very time and money rich can afford.

Our Access to Environmental Justice campaign is calling on the Scottish Parliament to investigate the barriers to standing up for the environment, and to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that communities can defend their right to a healthy environment.

In effect, we want Scotland to comply with the Aarhus Convention.

What you can do

Please support our Access to Environmental Justice campaign and donate today.

Read our 'Access to Environmental Justice Explained' briefing, and our policy briefing.

Download Tipping the Scales, our report on Scottish compliance with Aarhus.

Find out more about environmental justice.