Facilitating the People’s Access to Environmental Information, Decision-Making and Environmental Justice for Promoting Sustainable Development in Bangladesh

 

 

The main objective of this project is to undertake an assessment on the social capacity of Bangladesh in promoting the access to environmental information, decision-making and environmental justice with a view to enabling the stakeholders and communities to effectively pursue sound environmental management and sustainable development.

 

Under this project, it is attempted to examine the changes of the people’s perception and behaviours with the improved access to environmental information, decision making and environmental justice, and examine their impacts on environmental performance.

 

 

a.       Following the Guidelines of TAI Toolkit, TAI Bangladesh Coalition shall undertake minimum 18 cases studies to cover 8 cases in assessing access to information, 6 in assessing public participation and 4 in assessing access to justice. The sectors that may be covered include water, agriculture, forestry, fishery, mining, infrastructure, urbanisation, pollution, conservation, indigenous livelihood and state practice, industrialization, disaster and so on.

 

b.      Primarily each Coalition member shall supervise 6 case studies. 

 

c.       With respect to the information access, 3 sites shall be selected at the community/provincial level to examine the impact of improved access on the people’s perception and behaviour, and on the environmental performance.

 

d.      On the aspect of environmental justice, an assessment may also be conducted on the development of policies and laws. The broad cases shall include access to information claims, access to participation claims, environmental harm claim, non-compliance claims and so on as outlined in the guidelines of TAI Toolkit.

 

e.       On the aspect of public participation, cases shall be selected from projects, activities of government on environment. In undertaking the case studies, the legal framework and practices on public participation shall be assessed. The broad cases shall include policy-making decisions, regulatory decisions and project-level decisions as outlined in the guidelines of TAI Toolkit.

 

f.       The legal provisions that bar access to information shall be identified while doing the case study in the sector of access to information. The broad cases shall include environmental emergency, air quality monitoring, water quality monitoring, facility-level information and so on as outlined in the guidelines of TAI Toolkit.

 

g.       In the course of assessments, two specific workshops shall be organized, Inception Workshop, and Findings Sharing Workshop. Moreover, five community consultations are to be organized accordingly.

 

h.      Following the case assessments, the results shall be analysed, published and released in a Report with views from the representatives of State agencies and also the media, corporate sector, academia, etc. The Report shall be published in English and Bengali.

i.        The report shall contain one chapter with recommendations on developing capacity of the concerned agencies to facilitate access to information and justice and create scope for participation. This chapter shall also identify the legal/policy bars that bar implementation of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration and shall recommend changes accordingly.

 

 

Name: Syeda Rizwana Hasan

Affiliation: Advocate, Supreme Court of Bangladesh

& Member, BELA

Organization: Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA)

Address: House # 15 (A), Road # 3

Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka-1205

Telephone: 8614283, 8618706

Fax: 88 - 02 - 8612957

E-mail: bela @bangla.net