Green Access Discussion Paper

DP-2015-003

Measuring procedural rights through the UNEP Bali
Guidelines and the Environmental Democracy Index

Jesse Worker
Lalanath de Silva
2015/3/3

3-1-04 worker

International Workshop on "Participation Principle Indicators
under the Environmental Law: Towards Establishing
International Collaboration in Pursuit of Environmental Justice"
at 9th-10th March 2015
Organizers: GREEN ACCESS PROJECT II “Review of Legal Indicators for theParticipation Principle in Environmental Matters - Promotion of an International Cooperation
towards Strengthening the Environmental Democracy” (JSPS Grant-in-Aid), OSAKAUNIVERSITY, PROJECT TIGER “Policy decision-making and public participation onenergy, chemicals and water management: an international comparative study” (Global
Initiative Program), and MITSUI & CO., LTD., ENVIRONMENT FUND – Project“Proposing an Asian Version of the Aarhus Convention – Constitution of anInternational Cooperation for Implementing the Environmental Justice”

GREEN ACCESS PROJECT II
Osaka University

Measuring procedural rights through the UNEP Bali Guidelines
and the Environmental Democracy Index

By:
Jesse Worker and Lalanath de Silva,
The Access Initiative, World Resources InstituteSubmitted to Osaka University’s International Workshop on “Participation Principle
Indicators under the Environmental Law: Towards Establishing International
Collaboration in Pursuit of Environmental Justice”
March, 20151

Introduction
This paper highlights the major areas of progress as well as the significant challenges in
improving public access to the procedural rights of access to information, public participation
and access justice for the environment—also referred to as “environmental democracy
rights”. Case study research conducted by the Access Initiative from 2000-2008 as well asfrom recent literature has helped illuminate these challenges. Opportunities to expand andstrengthen these rights are emerging from several processes, including the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) Bali Guidelines on Principle 10, the Open Government
Partnership, the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, and the Latin American and
Caribbean Declaration on Principle 10—an outcome from the Rio+20 Conference.
However, these commitments need to be measured to ensure that progress is occurring.
The Environmental Democracy Index, developed by the Access Initiative and the World
Resources Institute, seeks to address this by measuring how well national laws around theworld harmonize with the UNEP Bali Guidelines. This paper describes the methodology
employed in the Environmental Democracy Index as well as lessons learned from pilot tests
conducted in 2013.

Environmental Democracy and Principle 10
In the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the international community
recognized that sustainable development depends upon good governance (Banisar et al,2012). Principle 10 of the Declaration sets out the fundamental elements for goodenvironmental governance in three “environmental democracy rights”: (1) access to
information, (2) public participation, and (3) access to justice (United Nations, 1992). Theserights are based on the experience that governmental decision-making that fails to include
the fundamentals of environmental democracy is more likely to lead to outcomes more likely
to be environmentally damaging, developmentally unsustainable, and socially unjust (Foti etal, 2008).
Environmental democracy rights facilitate more transparent, inclusive, and accountable
decision-making in matters relating to the environment and development. “Access to
information empowers and motivates people to participate in an informed and meaningfulmanner. Participatory decision-making enhances the ability of governments to respond to
public concerns and demands, to build consensus, and to improve acceptance of andcompliance with environmental decisions because citizens feel ownership over thesedecisions. Access to justice facilitates the public’s ability to enforce their right to participate,
to be informed, and to hold regulators and polluters accountable for environmental harm”(Banisar et al, 2012).

From Principle 10 to legal rights
Since the Rio Declaration of 1992, considerable progress has been made by governments
and civil society to enact laws recognizing and establishing environmental democracy rights.
As of 2014, 100 countries had enacted Right to Information laws (FreedomInfo, 2014). Over2

45 countries have environmental courts or tribunals specializing in environmental dispute
resolution1 while there is near universal coverage of laws requiring environmental impact
assessments of new projects (Pring and Pring, 2010). Many of these impact assessment
laws also require public participation.
Progress has also been made at the regional level in environmental democracy rights. In
1998, the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) pioneered a legally-binding,regional convention on environmental democracy – the Aarhus Convention. The Convention
recognizes environmental democracy rights, defines what they are, sets minimum standards
and obligates state parties to the convention to implement these rights. Additionally, theConvention also creates a compliance mechanism that is accessible to citizens from thecountries that are parties to the Convention (UNECE, 2014). It also served as the starting
point for the Protocol on Pollution Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs), which became
the first legally-binding instrument on pollution inventories in 2003 (Mason, 2010).
At the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, 10 Latin American countries signed
a declaration on Principle 10 and an additional eight have since joined (United Nations,2012). The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC) has
emulated the UNECE and established a process to consider an instrument on environmental
democracy for that region based off of this Declaration. The Rio+20 outcome document “The
Future We Want” underscored the importance of access to information, broad public
participation, accountable institutions, and access to justice in achieving sustainable
development (United Nations, 2012).
Despite this progress, there is much work remaining to ensure that these rights are truly
available to empower the public. Commitments made by governments to the principles ofgood governance under the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, and the Johannesburg Plan of
Implementation need to be strengthened, monitored, measured, and reported upon. Indeed,
compliance documents from the Aarhus Convention Secretariat reveal that access to
information has been more easily implemented than the other two pillars (Mason, 2010).
Still, greater urgency and emphasis is needed to proactively disclose accurate, timely, andaccessible environmental quality information, its pressures, and impacts on public health(Excell, 2014).
Transparency alone, without an engaged public and accountability mechanisms forenvironmental harms and procedural rights, is unlikely to achieve its potential impact.
Analysis of the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) of the United States revealed that facilities
were more likely to reduce waste if there engaged civil society organizations and politicalsupport for pollution reduction in their areas (Kraft et al 2011). While China has recently
increased transparency around environmental quality and pollution sources central to its“War on Pollution”, many question whether sufficient accountability mechanisms are in place
for the public to hold violators accountable (Economy, 2014; Li et al, 2012; Stern, 2014). Thishighlights the need to implement environmental democracy rights as a package—information
facilitates participation but cannot ensure improved outcomes alone. A diverse array ofadministrative and judicial mechanisms made widely available to the public can help protectthese rights. It is important to note that the impact that these rights can have depend on

1 Pring, G and Pring, C, Greening Justice: Creating and Improving Environmental Courts andTribunals, 2010 (World resources Institute)3

enabling factors such as civil society capacity, state capacity, bureaucratic culture, and otherfactors, and that this is an area of continuing research (Gaventa and Mcgee, 2013).

Persistent Challenges
The Access Initiative (TAI) is a global network of civil society organizations that promote theright and ability of communities to influence decisions that affect them and the natural
resources that they depend on. Since 2000, TAI has benchmarked 54 governments on theirenvironmental democracy performance. In 2006, TAI analyzed the results of 24 of theseassessments the findings of which might be summarized here:
1. While access to information law and public participation law had grown,
implementation still lagged behind;
2. Framework laws for freedom of information were more widespread than framework
laws on public participation;
3. Fewer laws required the proactive release of information and access to information
on industrial facility pollution and compliance was particularly weak;
4. Water quality monitoring systems were generally weak while air quality monitoring
systems were stronger; both generally failed to adequately and timely communicate
results to citizens;
5. Countries performed poorly in providing environmental information during and after
emergencies;
6. Most countries produced state of the environment reports of generally good quality,
but publicity was particularly weak and they were not regular;
7. Public participation had not been mainstreamed at the project level in about half ofthe countries assessed;
8. Planning and policy processes did not consistently involve public participation. Thosethat did varied in terms of how well they facilitated involvement;
9. The majority of governments were making some investments in building the capacity
of officials to implement environmental democracy rights, but a significant minority
did not.
In this context, TAI identified four key hurdles that needed to be overcome in order toimprove environmental democracy. These are:a) Finding ways to manage vested interests and allow decision-making power to be
more shared more equitably;b) Identifying gaps in information systems and improving them;c) Fostering a culture of openness, especially in the bureaucracy; andd) Investing in capacity building for government and civil society (Foti et al, 2008).

The need for measurement
Assessments conducted by TAI since 2006 have confirmed most of these findings. However,
the rigorous indicator and case study based assessment method developed by TAI while4

yielding rich results is expensive and time consuming.2 TAI has found that repeating theseassessments on a regular basis to measure progress over time is not feasible.
These experiences led TAI to consider a more efficient and timely means of assessing
environmental democracy rights and practices around the world. New developments in
information technology with effective data visualization capabilities offered a new opportunity
to re-think how, where and when to assess and measure these rights across the world.
Additionally, TAI assessments were based on Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration andrequired TAI to define the details of the content of those principles. TAI also aimed toincrease the coverage of countries and develop a measurement system for these rights that
could be repeated regularly at a modest cost enabling progress and trends to be identified.
Measuring progress on environmental democracy rights is essential to transform these rights
and scaling their enjoyment and impact. The Environmental Democracy Index (EDI)
described in the paper is the solution that TAI has developed to overcome these challenges
faced by TAI assessments.

The importance of strong legal frameworks
Rights are created and established by law. Laws are created directly by legislatures,
through delegated legislation made by the executive, through decisions made by judiciaries
and through established social customs. Enforceable rights require legal frameworks
supported by institutions and compliance mechanisms. Without them, rights are empty
promises and make no difference to citizen’s lives. As Thomas Hobbes remarked in theLeviathan, “Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a
man at all” (Hobbes, 1651).
If environmental democracy is to serve sustainable development, rights of access to
information, participation and justice on environmental matters need to be recognized andestablished by the laws of a country. Measuring the extent to which the laws of a country
establishes and recognizes environmental democracy rights is essential to an understandingof whether these rights have true force. Measuring the extent to which these rights are
actually practiced, allows an assessment of whether the legal rights are practiced by citizens
and government alike. Having strong legal frameworks supportive of environmental
democracy is therefore a sine qua non for the realization of a Principle 10 world.
The use of indexes to measure progress and promote change in development and theenvironment is widespread. When constructed with clear goals, target audience, and withindicators that are capable measuring change through data collection, they can be effective
tools to promote change (Hsu et al, 2013). Indexes can also help distill important informationfrom that can help governments and civil society set priorities and take action.

2 A country assessment could take from nine months to a year.

5The opportunity of the 2010 UNEP Bali Guidelines
In 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme’s Governing Council3 unanimously
adopted the Guidelines for Development of National Legislation on Access to Information,
Public Participation, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters4—commonly referred toas the “Bali Guidelines”. There are 26 total guidelines organized under each “pillar”5 withseven guidelines each for access to information and public participation and fourteen
guidelines for access to justice.6 The Guidelines unpack Principle 10 with specific guidancedrawing on a body of good practice and norms developed through the experience of the
Aarhus Convention and by legal advocates and Principle 10 thought leaders. Unlike the
Aarhus Convention, the Bali Guidelines are voluntary. However, they represent the first timethat several nations outside of the UNECE region have agreed upon specific guidelines on
Principle 10 that deal with issues of cost, timeliness, standing, the quality of public
participation, and several other issues on which it can be more difficult to achieve
government consensus. Their adoption, along with the rapid growth of right to information
laws, the establishment of environmental courts and tribunals, the launch of the Open
Government Partnership, and the Latin American and Caribbean Declaration on Principle 10
at the Rio+20 summit suggest increasing political momentum to strengthen environmental
democracy in areas of the world that have historically lagged behind.
While the Bali Guidelines are concise and outline critical components of effective legislation,
they often lack the specificity needed by policy-makers and agencies that may be
inexperienced in implementing reforms in procedural rights. They do not, for instance,prescribe timelines for information release, provide detailed guidance on how to ensure thepublic’s comments are accounted for, or clarify how “broad standing” should be interpreted.
This matters because these reforms often challenge the status quo in practices of
information dissemination, power-sharing in decision-making, and accountability
mechanisms. Therefore, statutes and decrees which lack specificity may leave the public
without well-defined rights which can be appealed to and defended. This is not as much a
critique as it is an acknowledgement that policy-makers and advocates require additional
tools to help governments and stakeholders develop and implement laws and policies andwhich help measure the current quality of national laws and institutions and benchmark
improvements. UNEP has recognized this and is currently hosting capacity-building
workshops along with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) as
part of the Eye on Earth Access for All Special Initiative.7 Additionally, UNEP is working with
the World Resources Institute (WRI) to publish an Implementation Guide for the Bali
Guidelines, similar to what has been published for the Aarhus Convention.

3 The UNEP has since abandoned the Governing Council in favor of universal membership
4 Decision SS.XI/5, adopted at the Global Ministerial Environment Forum on February 26, 2010.
5 The use of the term pillars to describe the rights of access to information, public participation, andaccess to justice is commonly used in Aarhus Convention materials.
6 The Bali Guidelines may be accessed here : http://www.unep.org/civilsociety/Portals/24105/documents/Guidelines/GUIDELINES_TO_ACCESS_TO_ENV_INFO_2.pdf
7 The Eye on Earth Special Initiative was launched at the Eye on Earth Summit in Abu Dhabi in 2011as part of series of initiatives to promote transparency and accessibility of environmental data andencourage and facilitate learning, collaboration, and transformative, cross-cutting projects. It is
supported through a partnership of the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative and the United
Nations Environment Programme.

6In order to benchmark countries’ progress against the Bali Guidelines, TAI has developed
indicators under each of the legal guidelines and has commissioned environmental lawyers
in 70 countries to score their national laws against these indicators. These indicators which
will compose what will be called the Environmental Democracy Index (EDI) are intended toenable governments and civil society to assess their laws and performance in relation to theBali Guidelines and determine clear next steps for improved alignment. The purpose,
rationale, and methodology for these indicators are described below.
The purpose of the Environmental Democracy Index is to enable governments, civil society,and other interested stakeholders to assess, through systematic measurement, the degree
to which their country’s national laws harmonize with the Bali Guidelines. While there areother indexes that measure governance or access to information, there are no indexes that
we are aware of which measure procedural rights in relation to the environment. The EDI
indicators are designed to be actionable—meaning that users should be able to easily
identify what improvements need to be made to increase an indicator’s score. WRI plans torelease EDI biennially, which should ultimately allow for the benchmarking of progress overtime. While policy-makers are ultimately the target audience as they are responsible formaking improvements, indexes can also be effective tools to gain public and media attention
as a way of addressing principle-agent with reluctant or slow-moving agents.
EDI was developed by the Access Initiative (TAI), a global network of civil society
organizations who promote Principle 10 through research and advocacy. WRI is thesecretariat of the Access Initiative. While the indicators were developed primarily by the TAI
Secretariat at WRI, it was revised with expert feedback from legal experts who helped pilot
test the indicators, as well as from the Aarhus Secretariat and UNEP.

Indicator Development
Of the 26 Bali Guidelines, 23 refer to the development and implementation of legislation foreach of the three pillars. The remaining three advise governments to build necessary
capacity to effectively implement the other guidelines. While we recognize the importance of
capacity building, these three guidelines are not within the scope of the EDI at this point intime. The “legal indicators” measure laws, constitutions, regulations and other legally-binding,enforceable, and justiciable rules at the national level. State, provincial, and local laws were
not evaluated for the 2014 EDI, although they may be included in future editions. The scopeof assessment is limited to apex environmental management laws, air and water quality laws,
laws and regulations on extractive activities, terrestrial biodiversity, forests and terrestrial
protected area laws. Not assessed in the 2014 EDI are laws governing coastal resources,
marine protected areas, pollution, or biodiversity, fisheries, or energy. These reasons forthese choices are primarily logistical and do not necessarily indicate the scope of EDI into
the future. The first was to limit the scope of a lengthy legal review process to fit to time
constraints of the project. The laws that were included were those that were given priority insurveys to TAI civil society partners, who contributed to the development of the index.
As mentioned above, the Bali Guidelines contain more guidelines for the access to justicepillar than for access to information and public participation. Similarly, the number ofindicators that have been developed for each guideline vary depending on the substance of7the guideline. The indicators are designed to only test one discrete component of the eachguideline so as to create simple, clear metrics and limit subjectivity. As an example for thefollowing Guideline 1 on environmental information on request:
Any natural or legal person should have affordable, effective and timely
access to environmental information held by public authorities upon request(subject to guideline 3), without having to prove a legal or other interest.
The Guideline is calling for 1) environmental information to be made available on
request to any person as well as legal entities (as opposed to just citizens), 2) to beaffordable, 3) to be provided within a reasonable timeframe, 4) to be provided bypublic authorities (which should be considered broadly), and 5) to not require a legal
or other interest. EDI therefore includes six legal indicators for this guideline—one
which tests whether a law exists to provide environmental information on request andfive that assess the qualities listed above. While this method increases the number of
total indicators, it allows users to pinpoint provisions which need strengthening.
Analysis on the results of 2014 EDI will help determine the strength of any
relationships between indicators.
Nearly every indicator is accompanied by a guidance note, which typically consists ofa short paragraph that defines any key terms, provides clarification, and offers
illustrative examples. The legal indicators have four scoring options, ranging fromzero (lowest) to three (highest). Each score is accompanied by criteria which must be
in place for that score to be defensible. In this way, subjectivity in scoring is limited,though not eliminated. A score of three means that the country’s law is in compliancewith generally accepted good practice while a score of zero indicates that the law iseither silent or prohibits some aspect of procedural rights, depending on the indicator.
Citing the same example above, the table below demonstrates an indicator, its
guidance, and the scoring options.

Table 1: EDI Indicator 1.4—Requirements for timeliness in response to environmental information
requests

Indicator

To what extent does the law provide fortimely access to environmental
information?

Indicator guidance and scoring
options“Timeliness” in this indicator is areference to the first communicateddecision from the government agency to
an information request. A 30 day time
limit for first decision (grant or refusal)
communication is considered timely.
Time taken for internal review of therequest, appeals, etc., is not to be
counted.
Scoring Guide:The law provides 30 days or less for the initialdecision on whether to grant the request for
information = 3
The law provides between 30-60 days for the
initial decision on whether to grant the8request for information = 2
The law provides more than 60 days for the
initial decision on whether to grant therequest for information = 1
The law does not set a deadline for the initialdecision on whether to grant the request for
information, the law is silent on this matter,or there is no law mandating access toenvironmental information on request= 0

Creating the Index scores
The indicator scores are summed and averaged to produce a guideline score. The
guideline scores are then summed and averaged to produce a pillar score. Finally theaverage of the three pillars produces the country score. This methodology weights
the pillars equally but does not provide the same equal weighting for the guidelines
and indicators. Specifically, the guidelines for information and participation are
weighted more heavily than the guidelines for justice, as there are fewer of them.
While the choice made here can be debated, the results will be disseminated on a
website which will allow users to view scores, as well as the rationale for thosescores down to the indicator level.

Research and Review process
The research and review of the indicators for each country consisted of a four-stage
process diagrammed below:

National
Researcher

National
Reviewer

Secretariat
Reviewer

Final
Reviewer

The indicator scoring and review process was managed through the use of the
Indaba Platform, a tool developed by Global Integrity to manage communication andcollaboration in data collection.8

8 For more information, see: https://www.globalintegrity.org/initiative/indaba/

91. National Researcher: This role is held by a lawyer native to the country who is wellversed in laws and statutes surrounding environmental democracy. The researcher
was responsible for scoring the indicators, providing the sources to justify the scoresand providing relevant comments to explain the score. After completing the initialscoring, the research is submitted to the National Reviewer (indicated by the top-leftarrow). This role is typically filled by a public interest lawyer.
2. National Reviewer: This role is held by another lawyer from that country who isfamiliar with the relevant laws and statutes. This lawyer must be independent andunaffiliated with the first. In the pilot phase this role was not required to be a lawyer,
however that requirement was installed for the 2014 EDI. In the 2014 EDI, this role
was often filled by senior lawyers from academia, the public sector, or civil society.
3. Secretariat Reviewer: TAI Secretariat staff held this role. The Secretariat reviewer
reviews the researcher’s scores and comments as well as the national reviewer’scomments. The Secretariat also provides a second review of the scores, sources,
and rationale, and raises his/her own questions to the researcher. He/She thensends questions back to the researcher and reviewer to mediate between the twoparties ensure quality control. In the diagram above, the wider arrow to theresearcher represents the greater frequency in which questions are sent to theresearcher. Each country’s indicators received at least one review by anenvironmental lawyer at the TAI Secretariat.
4. Final Approval: The TAI Secretariat staff also fills this role, although the final reviewer
is never the same person as the secretariat reviewer for any given country. The final
reviewer checks scoring and reviews for consistency and sends any final questions
back to either the National Researcher or National Reviewer.

2013 Pilot Testing
TAI conducted a pilot study of the Environmental Democracy Index in the fall of 2013. In thispilot study, the laws of thirteen (13) countries were assessed based on 79 legal indicators
under 239 of the 26 Guidelines, and no practice indicators. The countries tested in the pilot
study were Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Indonesia, India, Cambodia, Turkey,
Ireland, Hungary, Uganda, Cameroon and Kenya. The TAI Secretariat at WRI provided all
TAI partners with an opportunity to indicate an interest in participating in the pilot. From thislist, partners were chosen on a basis of geographical diversity and legal experience.
Partners were then asked to nominate one researcher and one reviewer. In some cases,
partners self-nominated and in other cases outside or affiliated civil society lawyers were
nominated.

9

The three guidelines dealing with capacity building, and not laws, were not tested because theirimplementation is based on fluctuating Government annual budgets

10Lessons Learned
While the results from pilot tests are not intended for dissemination but rather to improvemethodology and provide lessons learned for the research process, there were some key
insights from the scores:












Parties to the Aarhus Convention (Hungary and Ireland) scored highly compared tothe others overall, but did not lead the scores for each pillar, suggesting thatproblems remain in transposing the Convention into national law and/or thatcountries outside of the Convention are making progress on implementing Principle
10 comparable to those within.
A high score on one pillar did not necessarily indicate a high score for all. As an
example, a Latin American country had one of the highest scores for access to
information but the lowest score for public participation. This is important, as thequality of these rights may support or constrain one another.
The quality of legal protections for procedural rights varies not only across pillars, but
within pillars. In some cases, countries were very strong on 1-2 guidelines within apillar, but the law was silent on others. This heterogeneity within the law highlights
the need to examine how well rights are protected across sectors and whereloopholes exist that may hinder the ability of citizens to use these rights.
The right to environmental information is alluded to in some countries’ constitutions
but is not supported by legislation. The question of whether these Constitutional
articles were specific enough and enforceable was a subject of debate and differinginterpretation.
Similarly, legislation on information disclosure or participation may not be supported
by decrees that define parameters and aid implementation. This was the case forpilot test countries in Africa, in particular.
Evaluation of these laws requires an understanding not only of environmental laws,
but also administrative codes, judicial procedures, and in common law countries,
important precedents

Adding Indicators on Practice
After listening to feedback from partners, stakeholders, and other experts, we decided to add
indicators that would focus on measuring implementation in addition to the law itself. TAI had
originally avoided including indicators on implementation due to a few key methodologicaland practical concerns.
The first concern comes from 10+ years of TAI country assessments, which include
evaluations of how well laws work in practice. While assessing implementation is essential toknow how well the law is working in practice, its evaluation is prone to subjectivity andmethodological weaknesses which can hinder comparisons across countries.
The second concern is more practical: measuring implementation can be very costly, interms of time and resources. In some cases it may involve sending information requests or
meeting with multiple agencies to obtain information which may or may not be readily
available. EDI is intended to be a low-cost assessment that can be repeated every two years.
11Ultimately, we decided to create a limited set of indicators on implementation while
attempting to address these concerns. However, these indicators do not comprehensively
measure environmental democracy in practice and cannot be considered a national proxy.
Rather, as explained below, they seek to provide a snapshot. This and other considerations
include:Implementation “Snapshot”: Rather than attempting to be comprehensive, theindicators focus on key aspects of implementation for each pillar. This snapshot will
still provide useful information without becoming too costly or difficult to complete.
Easily retrievable information: The implementation indicators have beendeveloped so that they may be answered through modest online research or a few
phone calls. Examples include: “Are Environmental Impact Assessments fordevelopment projects available online or at a national government agency for publicaccess?” and “In the last 5 years, have public interest environmental cases filed byNGOs been rejected because of lack of legal standing?”
Discrete indicators: Because they are not comprehensive and do not pertain toevery guideline, the implementation indicators are scored differently and kept
separate from the legal indicator scores. Instead of being scored 0-3, they will bescored as “Yes”, “Limited”, or “No”, with supporting evidence. A score of Limited may
mean, for instance, that data made available online on air pollution do not include
major pollutants or are updated sporadically.

Other Revisions
In addition to creating the practice indicators, a few other significant revisions were made to
the indicator methodology. First, the scores for the first indicator of certain guidelines canconstrain the scoring options for subsequent indicators. This can occur in one of two ways.
In the first scenario, the initial indicator may test for the existence of a broad requirement in
the law with subsequent indicators testing the quality of that requirement. If there is noprovision requiring, for instance, that environmental information be provided upon request,
then there can be no qualities to test. In this case, all subsequent indicators must be scoredzero.
The second revision is a more sweeping one. Recognizing that the law may not be the sameacross different sectors, the scoring options for indicators testing a body of laws werechanged so that the indicator tests the extent of the coverage of a key provision across the
body of laws. A score of 3 then would indicate that the provision—requiring that there be
opportunities for public participation in decision-making, for instance—applies to all the laws
assessed. A score of 2 would indicate that it applies to a majority of the laws assessed, 1
indicates a minority of laws assessed, and 0 indicates that the law is silent. The major
limitation to this approach is that the comparative quality of laws across the sectors cannot
be easily assessed. However, testing the same indicator across multiple sectors would
require hundreds of additional indicators, which is an unfeasible alternative.

12

Next Steps
The revised EDI, which includes 75 legal indicators and 24 practice indicators, was used in2014 to collect data from 70 countries. At the time of writing, these data were still being
reviewed. Data will be shared with respective ministries from each country to elicit feedback.
This feedback, along with the scores, sources and comments, will be made available on aninteractive website and platform in early 2015. The goal is for the results to start dialogues
and action plans at the national level in several countries around the world.

Conclusion
Despite considerable progress through new national laws and regional conventions, thefulfillment of the rights of access to environmental information, public participation, andaccess to justice around environmental decision-making still face serious challenges. Accessto information has been more institutionalized than the other two pillars. Some regions still
do not have strong legal frameworks and even in regions where laws exist, the quality mayvary across the body of law. Implementation often lags behind the law.
These rights have not been systematically measured on a global scale. Using the Bali
Guidelines as a framework, the Access Initiative at the World Resources Institute piloted
indicators in 2013 to degree to which national laws harmonize with the Bali Guidelines. The
indicators were revised and a supplementary set of indicators to measure the existence ofenvironmental democracy in practice. This index—the Environmental Democracy Index—will
be used to measure laws and a subset of practices in 2014 in 70 countries around the world.
The results are intended to help governments and civil society advocates alike in identifying
gaps in law and implementation, prioritize reforms and learn from good practice in othercountries.

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