Overview
- Provides the first assessment of the Aarhus Convention from the International Relations discipline
- Marks the Convention’s twenty-fifth anniversary with a new, novel investigation.
- Originally theorises environmental solidarisation
Part of the book series: Environmental Politics and Theory (EPT)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
The Aarhus Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters has been celebrated as a pioneering international environmental agreement. Given that a quarter-century has passed since Aarhus was opened for signature, now is an opportune moment to revisit it from a fresh perspective. Marking this anniversary, this book explores Aarhus from the vista of the English School of International Relations, an ethically-minded perspective used to gauge the prevalence of state-oriented and human-oriented progress from the Convention's rationales and realities. It firstly considers Aarhus' propagation, investigating the legal, diplomatic and geopolitical contexts enabling its emergence. It secondly investigates Aarhus' germination, with reference to its trinity of procedural rights. Thirdly, the book examines the Convention's growth, in terms of the development of its organisational infrastructure. The chief finding is that Aarhus demonstrates, in environmental contexts, the feasibility and benefit of fostering 'humankind' solidarist progress, rooted in moral cosmopolitanism, within the existing power arrangements of a sovereignty-based pluralism. Pluralist concerns for diversity and international order are found to be a precondition for more ethically ambitious solidarist endeavours. These observations reinforce the logic of solidarisation, an English School innovation that presents sovereignty as (a) being ethically matured by solidarism whilst (b) delimiting solidarism within the threshold of states' tolerance.
Reviews
Employing the framework of the English School of International Relations, the book offers a reflective reading into one of the most influential environmental agreements of the post-WWII and Cold War era: the United Nations Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention).
The book’s key strength resides in the gentle unveiling of the intrinsic balance achieved, under the Aarhus Convention, between the sanctity of state sovereignty and the propagation of ‘humankindness’ by providing the public access to environmental information, by enabling its participation in environmental decision-making, and by opening avenues for seeking environmental justice. (Gor Samvel, Vice Chair, PRTR Protocol Compliance Committee)Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr. Duncan Weaver is Senior Lecturer at University of Suffolk, United Kingdom.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Aarhus Convention
Book Subtitle: Towards Environmental Solidarisation
Authors: Duncan Weaver
Series Title: Environmental Politics and Theory
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43536-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-43535-5Published: 31 October 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-43538-6Due: 01 December 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-43536-2Published: 30 October 2023
Series ISSN: 2731-670X
Series E-ISSN: 2731-6718
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 202
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Environmental Policy, Political Theory, International Environmental Law, International Relations, Environment, general, Environmental Geography