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11 - Environmental justice through international complaint procedures? Comparing the Aarhus Convention and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

from Part II - Public participation and access to the judiciary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2009

By
Malgosia Fitzmaurice
Edited by
Jonas Ebbesson  and
Phoebe Okowa
Jonas Ebbesson
Affiliation:
Stockholms Universitet
Phoebe Okowa
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

Complaint procedures and environmental justice in a new world order

The subject-matter of this chapter relates to the achieving of environmental justice through international complaint procedures. These procedures can be seen as a part of the fabric of the new world order, governed by international law, in which justice for an individual is accomplished through expanding public participation of civil society (non-governmental organisations). Therefore, one may suggest that, by means of analogy, the theories of deliberative democracy – according to which the validity and legitimacy of norms directly depend on the participation of citizens in their formation and application – are relevant also in a global community, which is ‘a community of states and, simultaneously,…community of persons’. In this new order, and in the arena of international and national law relating to the environment and nature resources management, the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has increased dramatically.

While these post-national processes are unclear and ambiguous, this increasing influence of non-state actors indicates that the legitimacy of international law may be assured, or at least promoted, by popular processes of will-formation through transnational networks of communication.

Provided that legitimacy is about procedural systems enabling the application of law, do these systems also ‘satisfy the participants’ expectations of justifiable distribution of costs and benefits’? With this question in mind, the complaints mechanisms in question will be assessed from the point of view of their suitability as a tool to achieve procedural justice and perhaps corrective justice.

Type
Chapter
Information
Environmental Law and Justice in Context , pp. 211 - 228
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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