Secretariat - Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities

The 1998 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters establishes that sustainable development can be achieved only through the involvement of all concerned parties. The Convention builds directly on Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration by linking government accountability to environmental protection, and through its focus on interactions between the public and public authorities in a democratic context.

The OSCE has, since 1999 worked closely with the UNECE Aarhus Convention Secretariat in promoting the ratification and implementation of this Convention by its participating States. The Office of the Co-ordinator for OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities has supported the setting up of Aarhus Public Environmental Information Centres in several states in South Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

These initiatives have helped provide a forum through which state officials from Environment Ministries, environmental NGOs, students, and ordinary citizens can meet to discuss and resolve environmental issues in a spirit of co-operation and co-ordination.

Through the promotion of dialogue between stakeholders, the OSCE is exploring means through which it can learn from the experience already accumulated from the variety of Centres established in order to further improve their work. The OCEEA is currently particularly concerned with ways in which it can address the 3rd pillar of the Convention, which relates to Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.