The Meeting of the Parties to the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters elected by consensus attorney Rytis Satkauskas, nominated by the Environmental Coalition, as new member of the Compliance Committee.
The Aarhus compliance mechanism is a non-judicial, consultative system established by the Aarhus Convention to review compliance with its environmental information, public participation, and access to justice provisions. The mechanism allows members of the public and NGOs to submit communications about a Party’s non-compliance to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC), which then issues findings and recommendations to the Meeting of the Parties (MoP) for a final decision.
The environment is a common concern and a subject of work for civil society, which includes non-governmental organisations and community groups focused on public interest. Civil society organisations act as key partners in environmental governance by building technical capacity, advocating for policy change, raising public awareness, and helping to implement international agreements, acting as a bridge between the public and governmental bodies.
The Committe reported to the Meeting among other items on compliance of Lithuania with its obligations under the Convention. The Committee requested in particular to follow the Convention implementation standards, specifically that (i) The public is notified about all time frames for opportunities for public participation, including the period during which relevant documentation will be available and in which comments can be submitted; (ii) Any international consultations concerning a specific cross-border activity by a public authority of the Party concerned prior to completion of the public participation procedure under article 6 must not, in law or in fact, preclude all options being open during the public participation procedure; (iii) The range of options open at each stage of decision-making is adequately reflected in the information provided to the public at each stage; (iv) A clear requirement is established that comments submitted by the public are sent to the competent public authority itself; (v) The obligation to take due account of the comments, information, analysis or opinions submitted by the public during the environmental impact assessment procedure is placed on the competent public authority; (vi) When publishing the decision, the competent public authority provides evidence to the public, either in or along with the decision, of how due account was taken of the outcome of the public participation.
It is worth noting that the Committee underlined the imperative that the State Security Department receives clear instructions to refrain from activities that could be perceived as harassment, penalization or persecution of persons seeking to exercise their rights to participate or seek access to justice under the Convention.
Under convention a position of Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention is established to take measures to protect any person experiencing or at imminent threat of penalization, persecution, or harassment for seeking to exercise their environmental rights.
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