Course overview

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and air and water pollution are among the global environmental problems that affect everyone’s health and wellbeing and threaten development. Good governance is essential to effectively respond to these challenges. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 promotes needful actions in this area and is instrumental for achieving all other SDGs. 

This course explores the environmental dimension of SDG 16, honing in on the targets and indicators linked to access rights, These access rights – access to information, public participation, and access to justice, supported by safeguards for environmental defenders – are essential elements of environmental stewardship and decision-making, and provide invaluable tools to contribute to the achievement of SDG 16.

After introducing access rights, this course will look in greater depth at three Multilateral Environmental Agreements stemming from Rio Principle 10 – the Aarhus Convention and its Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers, and the Escazú Agreement – that further develop these rights to empower societies to address existential challenges and protect our planet.

Finally, this course will survey a variety of other environment-related and human rights treaties and international instruments, exploring how they interconnect and contribute within their respective substantive focuses to the goal of good governance, leaving no one behind and, ultimately, sustainable development.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand the interplay of SDG 16, the access rights, and environmental governance;
  • Explain the role and function of the access rights in the context of the Aarhus Convention, Protocol on PRTR, and Escazú Agreement;
  • Give examples of how SDG 16 and the access rights manifest in other MEAs and international instruments.