Environmental democracy and law on public participation

Environmental democracy is not a peripheral concern – the ability of our precious democratic institutions and values both to respond to and to survive our environmental crises should be one of the central questions of our time. It is also a complex and a rich topic, and when allied with the role of law, could be approached in many different ways. In this paper, I explore the environmental and democratic potential of procedural (specifically participatory) rights in law. I focus on two regional conventions: the UNECE Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters and the UNCEPAL Escazú Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. These two Agreements provide an opportunity to explore the ways in which law speaks, or might speak, to the features that characterise environmental democracy.