Declaration on Environment and Development made an even more direct link between the environment and procedural rights stating ‘[e]nvironmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level’. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment also included procedural rights in the Draft Principles on Human Rights and the Environment she annexed to her Final Report in 1994. 186 Within the Asia Pacific Region, Ministerial Declarations have affirmed the right of individuals and NGOs to be informed about and participate in matters affecting the environment. 187 The most recent development in environmental procedural rights is the Aarhus Convention, which enunciates legally binding rights – the right to access information, the right to public participation in decision-making and the right to access to justice – in environmental matters. Importantly, the Convention instructs States Parties ‘to take steps to guarantee the basic right of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to health and wellbeing’, 188 rather than enunciating an aspirational right to a healthy environment. The Convention, therefore, links practical rights with ‘the harder-to-grasp complex of rights included in the right to a healthy environment’. 189. Principles for Environmental Procedural Rights The following principles guide the promotion, protection and implementation of environmental procedural rights, and appear throughout the Aarhus Convention. NHRIs should advocate that states adopt environmental procedural rights encapsulating the following principles: • • • • • • • Environmental procedural rights should be available to all, taking into account the particular needs of indigenous peoples and particularly vulnerable groups. Such rights should be available, free from discrimination, including on the basis of sex, race and nationality. This principle of non-discrimination also means that people and communities who exercise these rights should be able to do so freely without facing discrimination, harassment, punishment or other forms of abuse. The subject matter and scope of procedural rights should be construed expansively, (see for example A1 (access to Information; B3 and B7 (public participation) and C4, C5 and C7). Environmental procedural rights should be enforced and implemented in a way which makes them effective, accessible and useful tools for people and communities to realise a right to an environment of a particular quality. To enable the effective realisation of environmental procedural rights, there should be consistency between any instruments and any entity applying and enforcing them. States should actively apply and enforce environmental procedural rights on their own initiative by disseminating and initiating information and activities implementing the right. States should also respond to requests for the application and enforcement of environmental procedural rights. If a state actor or non-state actor refuses to apply and enforce any environmental participatory right, they should provide reasons to the public. To the degree possible, states should invest the necessary resources to ensure that environmental procedural rights are implemented and enforced. The implementation and enforcement of procedural rights should be reviewed in accordance with environmental changes and developments in the specific right to an environment of a particular quality. 186 Draft Principles on Human Rights and the Environment in Fatma Zohra Ksentini, Review of Further Developments in Fields with Which the Sub-Commission Has Been Concerned: Human Rights and the Environment, UN ESCOR, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 46 th sess, Provisional Agenda Item 4, Annex I, 74, principles 11(b), 15–20, 22 UN Doc E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/9 (1994). 187 See, eg, Ministerial Declaration on Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific 1990/1995 [27]; Ministerial Declaration on Environment and Development in Asia and the Pacific 2000 [1], [14]. 188 Stec and Casey-Lefkowitz, above n 3, 29. 189 Ibid 14, 29. - 50 -