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Abstract
This paper argues that the Aarhus Convention on Access to Environmental Information, Public Participations in Decision Making and Access to Environmental Justice is an international environmental convention whose rationale can be partially explained by its potential to reduce the incidence of social conflict caused by environmental change or changes to the environmental caused by industrial and/or scientific and technological development. This particular rationale of the convention is explained with reference to contemporary social conflict induced by environmental politics in the Republic of Ireland.
Notes
1 Steven E. Daniels and Gregg B. Walker, Working through Environmental Conflict: The Collaborative Learning Approach (Westport, CT: Preager, 2001).
2 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (New Delhi: Sage, 1992).
3 See John Barry and Peter Doran, ‘Environmental Movements in Ireland: North and South’, in A Living Countryside? The Politics of Sustainable Development in Rural Ireland, ed. T.V. McDonagh and S. Shortall (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, forthcoming).
4 Peter Sand, ‘The Right to Know: Environmental Information Disclosure by Government and Industry’ (revised version of a paper presented at the 2nd Transatlantic Dialogue on The Reality of Precaution: Comparing Approaches to Risk and Regulation, Warrenton, VA, 15 June 2002 and the Conference on Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change: Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition, Berlin, 7 December 2002). Also see Tatiana R. Zaharchenko and Gretta Goldenman, ‘Accountability in Governance: The Challenge of the Aarhus Convention in Eastern Europe and Central Asia’, International Environmental Agreements 4 (2004): 229–51. Also Jane I. Dawson, Eco-nationalism: Anti Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine (London: Duke University Press, 1996).
5 Securitization has been defined as ‘a technique of government which retrieves the ordering force of the fear of violent death by a mythical replay of the variations of the Hobbesian state of nature. It manufactures a sudden rupture in the routinized, everyday life by fabricating an existential threat which provokes experiences of the real possibility of violent death’ – Jef Huysmans, ‘Desecuritization and the Aesthetics of Horror in Political Realism’, Millennium 27, no. 3 (1998): 571.
6 As Lee and Scarce have noted, the direct action of ecological protest has emerged in recent years with groups such as Earth First! and the more hard-core Earth Liberation Front. Rik Scare, Eco-warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 1990) and Martha Lee ‘Violence and the Environment: The Case of Earth First!’, Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence (Autumn 1995): 109–27.
Also see Grant Wardlaw, ‘Anti-Globalization.com: The Paradox and the Threat of Contemporary Violent Protest’ in Globalisation and the New Terror: The Asia Pacific Dimension, ed. David Martin Jones (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2004), 40–50.
7 I am referring in particular to the threat of climate change with the possible end of the Holocene period via non-linear ice-sheet disintegration. See the alarming analysis in J. Hansen et al. ‘Climate Change and Trace Gases’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (18 May 2007).
8 Michael O'Keefe, Shahram Akbarzadeh and Joseph Camilleri, ‘A New Direction: Launching Global Change, Peace and Security’, Global Change, Peace and Security 15, no. 1 (2003).
9 Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1991).
10 Ecological concepts of citizenship tend to offer alternative sites of belonging and representation to those articulated by the state. These alternatives present variable challenges to the legitimacy of the state.
11 See the European Union's webpage on Aarhus: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/aarhus/index.htm. Directives were issued in 2003 and 2006.
12 ‘Towards a Green Isle: Local Sustainable Development on the island of Ireland’, Centre for Cross Border Studies, 2004, http://www.crossborder.ie./pubs/greenisle.pdf
13 ‘Riots, Looting, Chaos, Panic, Curfews, Wars and Famine: What the Security Chiefs Are Not Telling You about Climate Change’, New Statesmen, 29 January 2007.
14 Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett, Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
15 See ‘The Aarhus Convention and Implementation Guide’, United Nations, 2000, http://www.unece.org/env/pp/implementation%20guide/english/part1.pdf, 14.
16 Elena Petkova and Peter Veit, ‘Environmental Accountability Beyond the Nation State: The Implications of the Aarhus Convention’, World Resources Institute (April 2000): 2.
17 This mirrors the American definition of public participation outlined by Cox. He writes, ‘I define public participation as the ability of individual citizens and groups to influence environmental decisions through (1) access to relevant information, (2) public comments to the agency that is responsible for a decision, and (3) the right, through the courts, to hold public agencies and businesses accountable for their environmental decisions and behaviours’ – Robert Cox, Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (London: Sage, 2006), 84.
18 Susan Baker, ‘The Politics of Cross-Border Environmental Pollution: The Case of the Sellafield Nuclear Facility’, Administration 39, no. 2 (2001): 90–115.
19 Petkova and Veit, ‘Environmental Accountability Beyond the Nation State’, write of ‘horizontal accountability’.
20 Thus, ‘active public participation, through consultation with relevant consultees … are important aspects of a successful EIA process’ – John Glasson, Riki Therivel and Andrew Chadwick, Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment (London: UCL, 1994), 187. Aarhus implies that the impact of a technology must be understood with reference to broader ideas that link sustainability to social conditions and support for a technology.
21 ‘The Aarhus Convention: An Implementation Guide’, 13.
22 Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1982).
23 Jeremy Wates, ‘The Role of the Aarhus Convention in Environmental Risk Communication’ (Roundtable Discussion on WTO Law, Science and Risk Communication, University of Geneva, May 2006).
25 ‘International Principles for Social Impact Assessment’, www.iaia.org, my emphasis.
26 John Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
27 Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243–8, www.sciencemag.org
28 Ken Berry, ‘Preventing Nuclear Terrorism’, East–West Institute, 2/2007. This quote is from the Executive Summary, p. ii.
29 Dobson writes, ‘citizenship has made a palpable comeback in recent years. It is now commonplace to find it used to articulate political projects across the political spectrum, and a considerable amount of intellectual effort has been devoted to positioning those projects in the complex conceptual field that citizenship has become’. Yet it is also true that there has been ‘no systematic attempt to relate the themes of ecological politics to those of citizenship’. Andrew Dobson, Citzenship and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 4.
30 Schlosberg writes, ‘Presently, the environmental field includes not only romantic preservationists, efficient conservationists, public-health advocates, and environmental illness victims, but also deep ecologists, greens, bioregionalists, animal liberationists, advocates of permaculture and organic agriculture, ecofeminists, religious evangelists, social ecologists, steady-state economists, neo-Malthusians, neo-Luddites, neo-Hobbesians, ecological technology promoters, nature consumers, indigenous rights activists, spiritualists, planners, conservation biologists, environmental health professionals, environmental justice advocates, environmental lawyers, gaians, ecosocialists, nature writers, worker-health advocates, eco-anarchist youth, and more’ –David Schlosberg, Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3–4. This is true but all these views share common tendencies looked at from a systemic perspective, i.e. they tend to be more or less inclined to accept the state, eco-modernization, the heritage of the Enlightenment, capitalism and so on. There is a risk of over-simplification in my argument but the impacts of policies can be understood in terms of the tendencies to promote/stimulate opposition to the state.
31 Ibid., 106. This point is also made on page 30.
32 Dobson, Environmental Citizenship, 89.
33 Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth. Though Dryzek, too, implicitly adopts the binary logic I am using, despite the pluralism of his overall account. Thus (page 232) he divides discourses into those that support social learning, such as ecological modernization, and those that do not, such as forms of survivalism. Dryzek includes of all forms of ‘green radicalism’ in the first category and admits that we need to be selective in our accounts of each ideology but I think that he selects the best aspects of green radicalism and ignores the worst. This is indicated by his benign view of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement which sounds like assisted suicide.
34 Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth, 332–3.
35 ‘One cannot talk of the environmental justice movement without discussing the notion of justice that is at its core. Obviously, the justice in environmental justice refers, in one key respect, to the inequity in the distribution of environmental risks. Here, the call for environmental justice focuses on the problematic distribution of environmental ills, which mirrors the inequity in socio-economic and cultural status’ – Schlosberg, Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism, 12.
36 Thus he writes, ‘For the environmental justice movement, this integration of distributional equity and recognition comes in the form of the demand for more public participation in the development, implementation, and oversight of environmental policy. In a sense, the movement argues that procedural equity is a way to address both distribution and recognition’ – ibid., 13.
37 The procedural approach of Aarhus is mentioned in Petkova and Veit, ‘Environmental Accountability Beyond the Nation State’, 1.
38 Dobson does write from a critical theory perspective. However, he emphasizes Habermas's critique of the Enlightenment and not his equally important defence of the Enlightenment. This is a common error in interpreting the overall shape of Habermas's critical project. Thus, ‘comparisons between early critical theory and green politics can be drawn because both of them … amount to a critique of various enlightenment themes’ – Andrew Dobson, ‘Critical Theory and Green Politics’, in The Politics of Nature, ed. Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie (London: Routledge, 1993), 190. For some, though, there is a missing element in this approach to Habermas – see Seyla Benhabib and Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves, Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).
39 John Barry, ‘Resistance Is Fertile: From Environmental to Sustainability Citizenship’, in Environmental Citizenship, ed. A. Dobson and D. Bell (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 22.
40 See for discussions the website of the UK's Nuclear Free Local Authorities group: http://nfznsc.gn.apc.org/
41 Robert Allen, No Global: The People of Ireland Versus the Multinationals (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 220.
43 Joint Committee on European Affairs Sub-Committee on European Scrutiny, 4 December 2003. All the upper and lower house debates can be viewed at http://www.oireachtas.ie/ViewDoc.asp?fn = /home.asp
44 Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, 12 July 2006.
45 See Anna Davies, ‘A Wasted Opportunity? Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland’, Environmental Politics 16, no. 1 (2007): 52–72. She writes, ‘[o]rganisations such as the Irish Socialist Network and political groups including the Socialist Party, Sinn Fein, and the Socialist Workers Party were centrally involved in coordinating activities in many communities. This mobilisation caused a blurring of boundaries between civil society and political organisation and an entanglement of community groups with radical political parties’ – page 60.
46 ‘Trends in Irish Environmental Attitudes between 1993 and 2002’, University College Dublin, 2003, http://www.ucd.ie/environ/reports/attitudesfirstreptfinal.pdf, 13.
47 Susan Baker, ‘The Evolution of the Irish Ecology Movement’, in Green Politics One, ed. W. Rudig (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 47.
48 Hilary Tovey, Environmentalism in Ireland: Movement and Activists (Dublin: IPA Press, 2007), 19.
49 Allen, No Global, 1.
50 Liam Leonard, Green Nation: The Irish Environmental Movement from Carnsore Point to the Rossport Five (Drogheda, Ireland: Green House Press, 2006), 91. Also see Susan Baker, ‘The Nuclear Power Issue in Ireland: The Role of the Irish Anti-nuclear Movement’, Irish Political Studies 3 (2000): 3–18.
51 Tovey, Environmentalism in Ireland, 27.
52 Susan Baker, ‘The Politics of Cross-Border Environmental Pollution: The Case of the Sellafield Nuclear Facility’, Administration 39, no. 2 (2001): 90–115. See also Colum Kenny, Fearing Sellafield (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2003).
53 Simon Dalby, ‘The Nuclear Syndrome: Victory for the Irish Anti-nuclear Power Movement’, Dawn Train 3 (Winter 1984–5): 6.
54 Ibid., 13, 34.
55 See Leonard, Green Nation, chapters 3–4.
56 Verta Taylor, ‘Mobilizing for Change in a Social Movement Society’, Contemporary Sociology 29, no. 1 (2000): 225, 227.
57 Leonard, Green Nation, 12.
58 Irish Times, 1 May 2004.
59 ‘On balance, I consider that the importance of the development, and the real and potential benefits which it would generate, would outweigh the short-term disamenity, disruption and inconvenience to residents and road users.’ This quote comes from the Inspectors Report. See case 207212, http://www.pleanala.ie/casenum/207212.htm
60 Irish Times, 25 October 2004.
61 Ibid., 2 February 2004.
62 Ibid., 16 January 2004 and 10 February 2004.
63 The judge hearing the case stated the following: ‘I do not find therefore that the applicant has put forward a substantial ground for his contention that his interpretation of “establishment” is correct, or more accurately, that the Bord's interpretation was incorrect, and therefore invalid.’ See the Irish Courts Service, http://www.courts.ie/
64 Irish Times, 23 October 2004. Note here the reverential language – ‘the entity that is Erris’ is a phrase that suggests an independent and almost sacred existence; it is an entity before it is a place with a name.
65 Irish Times, 5 April 2005.
66 There have been some in my home city of Leeds.
67 Irish Times, 18 March 2006, 4 May 2006.
68 Ibid., 18–19 October 2006.
69 Brendan Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism and Historical Scholarship’, Irish Historical Studies 26, no. 104 (1989): 329–51.
71 Ibid.
70 ‘Democracy in an Ecological Age’, FEASTA Review no. 2 (2004), http://www.feasta.org/
72 Leonard, Green Nation, 37.
73 E.P. Thompson, ‘Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilisation’, New Left Review 121 (1980).
74 Leonard, Green Nation, 39.
75 James Hart and Ulrich Melle, ‘On Rudolph Bahro’, Democracy and Nature 4(1997), http://www.democracynature.org/dn/index.htm
76 Ibid.
77 Rik Scarce, Eco-warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (Walnut Creek, CA: West Coast Press, 1990). For the influence of the anti-globalization movement in Ireland see Lawrence Cox, ‘News from Nowhere: The Movement of Movements in Ireland’, in Social Movements and Ireland, ed. Linda Connolly and Naimh Hourigan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
78 See Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World in Order to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Terrorism and the New Violence (New York: Henry Holt, 2000).
79 Leonard, Green Nation, 39.
80 See Mark Garavan, ‘A Democracy for an Ecological Age’, Growth: The Celtic Cancer: Feasta Review no. 2 (2004), http://www.feasta.org/.
81 Jane Dawson, ‘The Two Faces of Environmental Justice: Lessons from the Eco-nationalist Phenomenon’, Environmental Politics 9, no. 2 (2000): 23.
82 Leonard, Green Nation, 197.
83 Ibid., 426.
84 Susan Baker, ‘Dependent Industrialisation and Political Protest’, Government and Opposition 22, no. 3 (1987): 352–8.
85 Leonard, Green Nation, 5, 7.
86 Allen, No Global, 3.
87 Shell-to-Sea Statement, 3 October 2007, my emphasis.
88 Leonard, Green Nation, 6, 11.
89 Irish Times, 10 January 2005.
90 ‘Leaders Questions’, Dáil Debate, Official Irish Parliamentary Record, 22 November 2006 – see note 63.
91 Irish Times, 10 November 2006.
92 Brian Feeney, Sinn Fein: A Hundred Turbulent Years (Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1990), 162.
93 Robert W. White, Ruairi O Bradaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 321.
94 Terence Conway, Willie Corduff (two of the Rossport Five) and Sean Harrington appeared in a video published by the NIFC on the internet. See http://www.indymedia.ie/article/79408.
96 http://www.publicinquiry.ie/index.php. This name of this group is surely designed to make it appear more official than it really is. A public enquiry is normally an executive act of state. Points 9 and 16 in the preface are purely political assertions.
97 Speaking in the Dáil in December 2005. See http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/1213/connollyf.html
98 The RSF outlook is described in SOAIRSE – see, for example, January 2007.
99 Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland in the Twentieth Century (London: Arrow, 2004), 683.
100 Garavan, ‘Democracy in an Ecological Age’.
101 Maurice J. Bric and John Coakley, ‘The Roots of Militant Politics in Ireland’, in From Political Violence to Negotiated Settlement, ed. M.J. Bric and J. Coakley (Dublin: University of Dublin Press, 2004), 2.
102 Ibid., 2, 6.
103 Seanad Debate, Official Parliamentary Record, 6 October 2005.
104 Dáil Debate, 25 October 2006. Dempsey is now no longer in this post. He was replaced by the Green Party's Eamon Ryan. Tensions have risen between Ryan, the Green Party and Shell-to-Sea because Ryan has stated he cannot overturn the Corrib decisions.
105 Dáil Debate, 25 October 2006.
106 This is a point also made by Allen, No Global, 5.
107 Dáil Debate, 9 November 2006.
108 ‘We are here exercising and protecting our basic human rights, because those charged with this task have failed to represent us.’ Shell-to-Sea Statement, October 2007.
109 Dáil Debate, 15 November 2006.
112 Seanad Debate, Official Parliamentary Record, no. 6, 2005.
110 Seanad Debate, Official Parliamentary Record, no. 6, 2005.
111 Allen, No Global, 4.
113 In October 2007 New Zealand experienced some controversy surrounding the state's use of force, under anti-terror laws, to arrest the leaders and members of a so-called ‘terrorist training camp’. This case is like the case of Shell-to-Sea in that it involves localized claims to sovereignty, in this case Maori sovereignty, in alliance with eco-radicals and anarchists.
114 ‘Towards a Green Isle: Local Sustainable Development on the Island of Ireland’, Centre for Cross Border Studies, June 2004, http://www.crossborder.ie./pubs/greenisle.pdf, 53.